Three bold-as-brass D&B sluggers and a stack of powerful remixes so far this year plus more en route before 24 bows out… It’s safe to say that Paper Dragon are having a pretty solid year.
Each cut has been a statement. Following a pretty ravey sounding 23 (most notably with their 90s influenced Amplified Nostalgia EP), this year’s output slaps with a little more contemporary energy.
The symbolically titled =>÷ (equal is greater than divided) packs so much soul it could make Rudimental and Dr Meaker blush while their latest banger with Chez – The Temple – tickles with a wry essence of old Bristol jump up and pays homage to one of Glastonbury’s most coveted rave spots.
This shouldn’t be a surprise; Jon, Kris and Bruce are products of their west country environment and grew up surrounded by the sounds of the region’s luminaries and pioneers from Krust to Massive Attack, Portishead to D*Minds. This is the soundtrack that’s brought them together to this point and you can feel it in their diverse and deep digging range. Like their hometown itself, they’re just as comfortable serving up big liquid sing-alongs as they are tense rave tear-ups, as DJs and as a live combo with Chez.
With more new material set to land before November ends, and a big release event in Bristol, there’s a fresh energy to the trio who emerged five years ago and were previously fronted by Ruth Royall. Now setting a whole new load of parameters to the Paper Dragon sound and its exciting potential, we checked in with one third of the act Jon Savage to find out more.
Come on then, let’s kick off with the question everyone wants to know. What are your favourite dragons?
I think my fave dragon has to be the Luck Dragon from Never Ending Story, because who wouldn’t want a luck dragon in their lives? Bruce likes the Chinese dragon bringing Luck, protection and Yang energy, (funnily Bruce and I both have Chinese dragons tattoos from our misspent youth!) Kris likes a Welsh dragon: fierce, strong and powerful…
Da iawn! Tell us… It feels like you’re getting back into a groove with new releases starting to pick up pace. You had =>÷ a little while ago, then Unity Gain, now The Temple and another single on the horizon in November. Things look like they’re picking up momentum!
Thanks! Yes definitely we have recently locked into a nice groove between the three of us and have become quite streamlined in our process, it has taken us a while to get here but I think we are also in sync musically so the out feels vibrant and exciting!
I know you’ve been through a little personnel change but it seems like you’re back in a good space?
Yep defo, Ruth moved onto focus on her solo work and it took time for us to adjust. 2023 was just a flat for me personally and we all have families and work, so Paper Dragon has to be fun and fulfilling, we have got it back to that place where we are all excited by it. I love my time in the studio with Bruce and Kris and we are all working really well to our individual skills as well. We recently updated the branding so it all feels a bit more cohesive. All these things help put us in a place of feeling good, which I think is coming through in the music.
You can feel that. There’s a different edge to these new singles. =>÷ is a powerful soulful one. Less foundation and more Rudimental vibe! Tell us how this came to be and what inspired it. It’s a powerful tune!
Thank you, yeah the tune has a good story in fact! Whatever we create we endeavour to approach with a high quality production in mind, using a combo of out-of-the-box studio techniques and in-the-box computer processes to drive the creativity. We also love working with song writing vocalists in the studio to create something alive and soulful. But this tune is a tale of two parts.
Okay, I’m intrigued…
It was a very different song about seven years ago. We had a previous act called Playhead and we had written this tune with the jazz singer Pete Josef, he did loads of vocals for Roni Size and Danny Bryd 15/20 years ago and he is a friend of ours. It was called I See You and we had signed it to a label (Flex) run by L Double . They never ended up putting it out, so last year we were doing a hard drive deep dive and found this vocal which we reworked into = / > and another one by Pete which we are re-working on currently. It was obviously meant to happen this way as the new versions are lots better than tracks we made seven years ago! We’ve come a long way!
It was meant to be! Unity Gain has a different edge to it as well. It’s keeping with that old school nod you have in a lot of your tracks but there’s a fresh energy to it. Would you agree?
Yeah I really like Unity Gain, it took a while for that one to come together, it was going to be a vocal track, but we decided it was working well as a solid dancefloor roller! I think the sound comes from our mutual love of the old-school vibes, so we worked that into the tune and once it had gone through the production and mix process it came out sounding clean and high quality, but with the dirt that the old school rave tunes inherently embodied.
We have some great vocal remixes of this tune coming from Dope Ammo & Jasmine Knight and Kravitz and Chez, we are excited about that campaign and we are running a night on Nov 23, where we are all performing at the Attic Bar Bristol!
Sick. You just mentioned Chez. She fronts the track The Temple and was on a track by Virtue that we featured a while back. How did you link?
Yes, The Temple! This tune is massive and it sounds great in the club! We met Chez through Kravitz, who we have also been working with and she started playing some of our tunes in her set, so we linked up. She is from Gloucester we are from Bristol, so we decided to jump in the studio and also get working on a Paper Dragon Live show. She brings a wicked dynamic to the collective and is really great to work with.
Awesome. I love the cheeky early/mid 2000s jump-up vibes on the bassline. Paper Dragon is definitely moving at more of a D&B tempo right now isn’t it?
Yeah that bassline is all Bruce, he is a master of sound design and then Kris makes it sound so clear and punchy, I love the raw vibe on that track, minimal elements all high quality!
So we love all sorts of music, but I think we feel like we are at home with 170ish bpm, and that’s where we find most our listeners. It has been hard to get the support on the lower tempo tunes, but we won’t stop making them! Right now though we have jungle and D&B flowing out our veins.
Hopefully you’ll always be multi-genre at heart, though? I like the surprise of not knowing which way a Paper Dragon tune will go when I check one the first time… You’ve weaved and bobbed through many tempos and genres during the last four / five years haven’t you?
We have tracks of a range of tempos on the hard drives and, as you mention, have released lots of variation in the past, that won’t stop for sure, we sort of organically feel our way through the release process, it is defo going to be 170ish tempo for the near future, but you never know with us, as it is about feeling when the time is right to drop a certain tune!
With three of you in the act, do you ever argue?
We have argued In the past, it is part of the creative process and sometimes you need to fight your corner, but I would say for the last two years it has been pretty smooth sailing, we have figured a process that if two, or more, are on-board with a decision we move it forward generally, if two people are not on-board we don’t – and everyone has figured we all have the best interests of the project at heart! Again I think this flow is showing in the output and it is allowing us to move through things fairly swiftly and easily!
What roles do you all fill?
We are really lucky to all have complementary skill-sets and a great part in the middle of that venn diagram where we combine creativity. We are all producers/composers so all bring ideas to the table.
I would say Bruce is our most musical member, he is a multi-instrumentalist and has great music theory knowledge and definitely adds interesting musicality to the tracks. Bruce also generates a lot of the artwork.
Kris is an amazing mix engineer and arranger, arrangement is so key to the musical journey and getting the pull and push of a track correct. We do spend a good amount of time making sure the builds and drops of our tunes work to give maximum impact, and then Kris’s ears make the tracks sound so clear and crisp!
How about you?
I look after a lot of networking and management side of things, the administration of the release and creating the campaigns, generating content from the artwork Bruce creates, and then songwriting and production as well.
You have a live set-up, tell us all about that… How does it work?
Yes, so live performance has always been important for us, but the infrastructure needed for the performance of electronic music can be complex and intensive. People want to hear things sounding like they do on the record which, as mentioned, is hard to do live and we are humans, not computers. The process has a lot of initial outlay but we have been working on setup that is easy to work and also easy to tour and plug into club shows, where they may not have the facility for bands.
So at the heart we have Kris on decks DJing stripped back versions of our original music and using Ableton for stem playback. Bruce is then performing basslines, synths sounds and guitars using his custom built MIDI-guitar which triggers various hardware synths.
I am playing electronic percussion and also have a set up where I can run live visuals from stage if we have the ability to display them. We then have Chez at the front bringing the energy and her amazing vocals. It is scalable and flexible meaning it can just be Kris, Bruce and I on the decks and Chez singing if needed or any combination of us on stage at any point.
I like that flexibility. Does the live aspect of Paper Dragon influence the songwriting process?
To be honest I don’t think it does to a great extent, we don’t use the band setup to write music very often, however I think we would like to do that more – never enough hours in the day! But all of our experiences as performers definitely influence our ability to know what works with our music!
What does have a strong influence on the Paper Dragon sound or ethos?
Bristol I think is one of our main influences, the Bristol music scene is always diverse and admired for interesting forward thinking quality. We try to embody that, Massive Attack, Roni Size, Randall, Dazee, and many more of the ‘giant’s shoulders’ upon which we stand – and we love that! It is epic that we grew up listening to these artists and through our careers we have been able to meet, and work with some of them and occasionally tell them how important they have been in our journey. Bristol also has a good DIY ethos and an ethos of tolerance and understanding, which are all things we love!
You’ve been working with Kravitz a lot lately. He’s wicked isn’t he?
Kravitz is a legend. We met a good few years back when we had our SWU show, we used to play his tracks and we became friends through that. He has remixed a few of our tunes, most notably Strawberries, which was really well received. That remix really did the rounds last year and it was fun walking around festivals and events hearing it on soundsystems! We have another Unity Gain remix from him and Chez coming out next year!
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Sick. You’ve got an event coming up. You mentioned it earlier. Paper Dragon Presents, tell us about it!
Yes! November 23, Full Moon and Attic Bar, Bristol. We’ve Dope Ammo and Jasmine Knight performing a live rendition of their brand-new album project. Also on the lineup we have Kravitz, Chez and ourselves!
This event celebrates a collaborative project between these talented artists, all working together on remixes of Unity Gain. We’ll also have a student from dBS performing. We can’t wait.
Sick! What comes next?
After The Temple we have another tune with Chez called Winds Of Change, we then have vocal remixes of Unity Gain from Dope Ammo/Jasmine Knight and Kravitz/Chez, which will come early in 2025. We are making more music in the studio with Chez for 2025 and have various tracks in progress which will follow the Unity Gain remix campaign. Potential BadBoy is remixing The Temple and we are remixing the Axel Boy track Nowhere To Hide for Poize Audio. We are also hoping to get out more on the live circuit. We have upped it this year, but really would like to take the live show onto the festival circuit! So promoters out there – come and book us – we are ready!
Paper Dragon & Chez – The Temple is out now
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