Paul D. Miller

• Genre: Beats & Breaks
• Hometown: New York

About

While his DJ Spooky alter ego has spent the better part of the ‘90s compounding genres and transgressing boundaries between street and academic, dance and chill, and body and mind, Paul D. Miller has signed his true birth name on his more academic output. Although fusing genres like hip-hop and Musique Concrete are DJ Spooky's signature, these tracks spin at a considerable distance from the headz's beats and breaks; rather, they leave the body behind, preferring to reside in the psyche. These mindscape excursions are more in line with 20th century electronic composers Stockhausen, Schaeffer, and Xenakis in that they are dry and cerebral, a sign of Miller's academic history. The key difference however, is that Miller can substitute a horn section with a piece of vinyl and a rack-mount processor: a sign of his affinity with New York's Soundlab collective. Material sound sources are obfuscated, dematerialized, and set free in a drift of solar wind.

- Marc Kate