Paranoid London
Having entrenched themselves in the UK’s sleazy club scene for decades, Paranoid London duo Quinn Whalley and Gerardo Delgado have probably forgotten more than most people know about dance music’s subversive derivations. To this day, they embrace their love of electro, house, hip-hop and post-punk, and the iconic sounds that lay behind their foundations. The duo first met in 2008, with Whalley providing a helping hand for Delgado’s early productions. After a period of inertia, they teamed up to emit their own take on acid house, releasing several EPs and a self-titled debut album in 2014. Hiding behind the Paranoid London moniker, they refused to send promos to big name DJs and radio stations in order to preserve their anonymity and provide products that had genuine street value.
However, it wasn’t long before the secret was out as the duo spent the next five years working on a follow-up that would delve yet deeper into the dark analogue territories explored on their debut. Simply titled PL, Whalley and Delgado joined forces with the likes of Arthur Baker, Suicide’s Alan Vega, A Certain Ratio’s Simon Topping and Mutado Pintado, collectively adding gritty vocal layers atop Paranoid London’s already sonically deformed, apocalyptic acid instrumentals.
What are your musical backgrounds?
Gerardo Delgado: “I was your typical normal kid, bunking off school and running around London going into every second-hand record shop to look for house, hip-hop and electro music. I helped out in Fat Cat Records for a while and spent the summers DJing at Paradise Lost in Tenerife, where I’m from.”
Quinn Whalley : “My old man was a rock musician in the early to mid-’80s, so I had every drum machine going when I was a kid. Between the ages of eight and 14, I had a Roland TR-808 in my bedroom, Linn Drums, 909s, 707s and Oberheim DMXs. He got the first portastudio that came out, then the Fostex 8-track reel-to-reel. I was really into electro and creating impossible drum beats, so I was massively into drum machines.”
Do you have any anecdotes from
