Paso Doble has a freshly released album, Africa Knows Who I Am, on Melomania Records – his comeback to the music industry after a five year break. Within it, he’s curated a connection between these two moments in music – a collage sounding afro house – where you can hear the relationship between the afro house he was mixing and producing at the beginning of his career with all of the current afro house sounds.

The album features many collaborations with African vocalists and producers. “I am African and I wanted to work with Africans,” Paso Doble mentioned to me in one of our conversations. “The name [of the album] comes from my old podcast series from 2006-2007 – it was the name of the podcast. I was thinking that for my first album I had to come back to my roots, to the beginning of the story.” His podcast, Africa Knows Who I am, was listened to by millions of people, so he wanted to bring his listeners back to this monumental moment from his earlier days.

Photo by Lion Black XXVII

On this album he joins forces with vocalists Idd Aziz, TroyMusiq, and Oluhle; and producers MasterShine, Wilson Kentura, Freddy Da Stupid, and Loxion Deep. In an interview, he told me that he took his time carefully completing each track, and that the album’s production took him about a year, “I wasn’t thinking about the commercial aspects of the industry, I was just producing things that I love … This album is a piece of me, it’s how I feel music.” I met with him in Montreal at Salon Daomé, where he dropped a couple of his new tracks – featured below is Tishiki.

He’s taking his album on tour to places such as Italy, Greece, Germany, Paris, Cyprus, Angola, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and more. He’s also going to be hanging out in Morocco with Mr ID (see my previous article) over four tour dates.

Paso Doble can’t wait to share his music and see all your bodies moving and grooving to it. He’ll be in Toronto April 6th for his Album Release Party at Bunda Lounge, with local support from Sarah Jane Riegler (Afro Haus) and DJ Yogi (Solid Garage TO).

Cover photo by Lion Black XXVII