Album Review: Thaiboy Digital – Paradise

Thanapat Bunleang has released a record that seemingly melts both his personas – Thaiboy Digital and DJ Billybool – into one. Although, released under the Thaiboy brand (most famous as a “legendary member” of Sweden’s Soundcloud starlets Drain Gang) Paradise sees Bunleang embrace the underground culture of his homeland Thailand, where the the Swedish Migration Authority viciously deported him in 2015.

Paradise is not the first collaborative record Thaiboy has released but this is his first with a producer collective. That collective being the Swedish posse Swedm, which comprises Eurohead, jamesjamesjames and Varg²™.

Although Bunleang was adamant in the lead up to the album it would move away from DJ Billybool’s earlier work, which drew from early 2000s and early 2010s Eurotrance (or as ol’ Billybool put it “everything before David Guetta’s time”), Paradise in fact treads similar ground.

We are greeted on “Welcome to Paradise” with an epic trance intro of harmonic, wavey chords before Thaiboy chimes in singing his heart out in an enigmatic mix of Sadboy cries and Euroclub swings. He welcomes in a bass line AG Cook could have crafted at his most EDM.

The utopian “Dreaming Your Reality” is the build up before trance track “Solitary”, and with that drop comes the introduction of another Drain Gang star. Lo and behold, Bladee skews his timings and reminds us how to look at the stars and exist as a 4×4 kick explodes across the record in Euro trash heaven. 

Imagine raving at Thunderdome in the early noughties if most of the Drainers were slightly older and invited to MC on stage. There’s not much out there like it. Arguably, Tommy Cash has existed in this space for some time, but Thaiboy and Swedm’s take is more inflected with the pop synth of PC Music’s heyday, arpeggios abound, sharp saws clashing. Pasha Teknika, with all his questionable persona, is close too.

Paradise pounds along with all its trancey, Euroclash goodness, incorporating flair from Sweden’s dance highlights until eighth track, “Irish tears”, which reintroduces Bladee. It begins with an ethereal atmospheric intro again before dropping into a forlorn deep house, coupled with a crescendoed ending where Bladee and Thaiboy going toe-to-toe in who can be the coolest sad kid at the school dance.

On the whole, the album is quite deadmau5ey. It possesses familiar drops but has a lot more vocals than a normal dance record, owing to Thaiboy’s desire to meld his club roots with his Soundcloud fame.