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Even if you can’t leave the house, you can be transported by music.
By Jim Irvin.
Travelling without moving: Children Of The Sun’s (clockwise from above left) Mark Capanni; Orion’s Dee Jarlett and Martin Hanstead; album curator Paul Hillery; Will & James Ragar.
Paul Michael Hughes
EARLIER THIS century, avid crate-digger Paul Hiller y had car ved out an agreeable career as a promoter and jobbing DJ, not the floor-filling kind, but the kind who played whatever he fancied before the band came on. But this stopped abruptly, 13 years ago, when he suffered a breakdown. Subsequent problems, including being diagnosed with a complex form of PTSD, effectively made him housebound in Northampton, UK, and changed his relationship with the music he’d enjoyed spinning for people. “Music became therapy for me,” he says. Using it not only to heal, but to connect with the outside world, Hiller y zeroed in on the sounds he truly loved rather than what had worked when played out in public. “As I suffer from anxiety, anything with a heavy BPM sets off a panic attack!” Diving deep into tunes that didn’t make him anxious, he posted numerous mellow mixes under the rubric Folk Funk and Trippy Troubadours, which slowly won him a devoted online following. Then he was contacted out of the blue by Tony Higgins, curator of numerous fine compilations, who admired his work and introduced him to BBE Records, who commissioned a compilation from Hiller y with the proviso that it be drawn from music unavailable on major streaming ser vices, giving it a ‘Get it here or nowhere’ exclusivity. Hiller y agreed and employed