Paul St. Hilaire

Tikiman Vol. 1

Genre: ELECTRONIC, DUB / REGGAE

2LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Living legend of Berlin dub, Paul St. Hilaire aka Tikiman (Rhythm & Sound) is subject of a much-needed retrospective scanning solo productions across three decades for Kynant Records.

Adored around these parts for his ohrwurm vox as Tikiman on Rhythm & Sound’s Burial Mix records, Paul St. Hilaire is a Dominican artist based in Berlin since the ‘90s, where he’s honed a singular style of dub finely balanced between Caribbean tradition and its European offshoots. Any Berlin dub fiend will tell you, however, that St. Hilaire’s work does not stop at Rhythm & Sound, with his dulcet baritone also key to recordings by a raft of related artists such as René Löwe (Vainqueur), Deadbeat, and Rhauder, not to mention Larry Heard and Modeselektor. Perhaps lesser known are St. Hilaire’s inimitable solo productions, as previously showcased on a pair of albums for his False Tuned label, and now in abundance on ‘Tikiman Vol.1’, which reels between meditative steppers, psych-dub, rolling house and drowsy lovers for a rare insight to his cloud chamber studio floating somewhere above Kreuzberg.

While the tunes may bear a striking similarity to Rhythm & Sound, it’s all St. Hilaire’s own productions, custom-built with an extensive collection of vintage hardware to accompany his “patois metaphors on education, displacement and personal vs. global histories.” Reflecting on life between Dominica and Berlin, and especially as as one of the city’s long-standing but scant number of Black artists, it supplies a unique skew on the german capital’s beloved dub house/techno sound. Between the smoked-out dub blooz of ‘Bedroom in My Bag’ and the waves of rolling dub noise clag to ‘Three and a Half’, he echoes timeless work with Rhythm & Sound in the deep lovers dub mystery of ‘Little Way’ and ‘Keep Safe’, coining mesmerising sort of dub poetry on ‘Bright One’ and giving dancers something to trot to with the elegant pressure of ‘The Weather Man’, the swollen bass of ‘Ten To One’, and his skanking dub-jazz-house ace ‘In Door’. Legend.

2LP (Black Vinyl) (9)

Please note that shipping dates for pre-orders are estimated and are subject to change

Boomkat Product Review:

Living legend of Berlin dub, Paul St. Hilaire aka Tikiman (Rhythm & Sound) is subject of a much-needed retrospective scanning solo productions across three decades for Kynant Records.