Cornwall-based Paul Croley is a DJ and producer who’s best known for tearing up dancefloors and speaker cones with his hard-edged breakbeat tracks and sets while operating under his Cakeboy alias. A couple of years back, however, Paul made the decision to head away from all of the peak-time mayhem. After a re-evaluation of life and a timeout to connect with the beauty of the natural world that surrounds him, he set course towards the worlds of emotive electronica and melodic broken beat music under the new guise of Holocene.
Over the last two years, Paul has been hard at work in his studio creating a number of tracks that would eventually culminate in the release of his outstanding debut LP Home. Living where he does in the UK, Paul has always been an Ocean obsessive & Earth/Marine Science enthusiast and has described the body of work as “a musical love letter to the Universe, Planet Earth & above all our Oceans, the ancestral home of all life as we know it”.
Expressing his passion for the natural world across eight spell-binding tracks, Paul is joined on his multi-genre LP by Memphis-based vocalist and thespian Annie Freres. Annie’s spoken words and angelic vocals feature on several of the tracks and go hand-in-hand with Paul’s breathtaking backdrops beautifully. The opener of the LP Strange Illuminations (I Am The Ocean) and Another Place are just a couple of fine examples of the excellence that comes about when their musical minds collide. Although Home may come across as an LP that is serene in nature because of the inspiration behind it, there’s plenty to stir the soul with tracks like the rotating mass of intensity that is Supercell, the raw and euphoric breakbeat-roller Dugong and the sublime liquid drum and bass offering Weightless. If you happen to be heading out into the great outdoors, I’d highly recommend popping on your heads phones to take in the entire album while you walk or ride. Your connection to the beauty that surrounds you will grow even greater, while your appreciation for the well-crafted masterpieces you’re listening to will leave feeling refreshed, revitalised and you full of hope, which to be fair, is a rare commodity in this day and age.
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