Funk/Interview Paul Louis Villani - Sweat Drips

Paul Louis Villani is a Melbourne multi-instrumentalist and producer who thrives on instinct and experimentation. His sound bends across genres, pulling from funk, metal, hip hop, and art rock to create something raw, vibrant, and unpredictable.

Hello Paul Louis Villani. “Sweat Drips” has this chaotic, dirty funk energy — what was the first spark that set the tone for this track?

The moment I wrote the opening riff, laid it down and added brass over the top, I knew I was “cooking with gas”!! LOL! It just had a vibe, a groove. I used to collect all sorts of magazines back in the 90’s, some music mags had ZIP Disks attached preloaded with 15 or 20 royalty free samples, the drum track comes from there!

You describe the song as “funk that’s fallen off the rails.” What do those rails look like — and why did you decide to derail them?

Hmmm great question! I’m going to say that because of the dirty guitars, cheeky NSFW lyrics and crazy bass runs, it kinda feels like a derailed funk train!! It wasn’t a decision to derail, the derailing happened during the flow… recording this track began as a tiny snowball being pushed off the edge of a massive slope… you know what happens next!!

There’s a playful, mischievous vocal personality in “Sweat Drips.” Who or what were you channelling when you stepped up to the mic?

This is where complete transparency is something I employ and am excited by today’s and tomorrow’s production possibilities. It would be easy to claim the vocals in this track but that would be lying and I don’t exist in that realm. I recorded my vocals via my DAW and Logic X to get a melody line then uploaded my vocal (main and backing) stems into Suno and went through about 30 generations before I was happy with what you hear on the track. I can still sing, but it’s not something I need to use on my tracks anymore when I can alter it to sound like something I actually want to listen to. Very similar to pressing a pedal and making your guitar sound completely different. You’re still playing the notes but the output has been altered.

The track feels like a collision of live brass, thick bass, and grin-while-you-misbehave vocals — what part of the production process unlocked the groove for you?

All of it!! The drum track was all from a sampler disk I had collected from the 90’s.
As soon as I had that opening guitar and horn intro riffs written I knew exactly what type of drum samples I was going to use. The lyrics were the easiest part.
I applied a “freedom from fear of consequences” to the very first line of the
song and it was all written in 10 minutes.
The horns are all midi programming, I didn’t use a midi keyboard this time
and just typed/clicked in the notes and velocity as required, there’s not a lot
of brass so it didn’t take that long.
All guitar and bass is me playing through my DAW into Logic X.
This single was recorded in early August when I was suffering from frozen
shoulder (Left) and recording bass guitar almost destroyed me, especially
reaching down to the first fret :(
All mixing and mastering is done in Logic X.

You’ve mentioned influences like Sly Stone and Richard Pryor — how do humour and attitude shape the way you make music?

For this particular track, both humour and attitude are evident in both the music and lyrics. In all my music, life and all emotions experienced provide the backdrop to my creativity.

The song isn’t polite, and it isn’t meant to be background music. What role does discomfort — or boldness — play in your creative identity?

I’ll wrap both discomfort and boldness into one adjective that drives all my creative output: Honesty. I write/create from life experience, very rarely from make believe.

You craft everything yourself: instruments, production, lyrics. What freedoms — and challenges — come with that full creative control?

The freedom is I have zero input of other humans opinions, advice or direction.
My challenge is time and finance. I am a family man first, an employee second and a creative third. It wasn’t always like that, but it is now.

Genre boundaries melt in your music, pulling from funk, metal, hip hop, art rock. What do you think ties all those influences together in “Sweat Drips”?

The way I “sang” the melody line… part singing, part just spitting them out. The drums and bass, without question for me, those two tie in all mentioned genres into a groovy listenable mix!

If someone hears this track for the first time — head bobbing, laughing while they blush — what’s the reaction you hope lingers after the song ends?

That that person want’s to listen to it again and then also singalong while their hips are losing control!

Looking ahead, how does “Sweat Drips” reflect where your sound is going next? More chaos? More funk? More mayhem?

Maybe?! Sweat Drips is part of an EP coming out late November: Fully Unchained Creativity Kinetically Overriding Fossilised Frameworks. The EP has Hip Hop, Rap, Electro-Swing, Rock, Funk and Opera. Is that mayhem? Chaos? Hopefully you will have a listen and make up your own minds! 😊