Paula Tape's Latin-infused acid is the trip of a lifetime

“Ah, que heavy, I’m getting emotional,” says Paula Tape, speaking to Mixmag over a video call. She sits crossed-legged on a sofa, her long black hair—framed by two dyed blonde streaks—tied up under a cap, waving her hands toward her face as to stop the tears from falling. She quietly laughs—she wasn't expecting to feel this way while discussing her latest EP, ‘Acid Latino (Sonido Real)’, which was released on Future Classic last November.

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Layering salsa keys over her percussion-heavy sound,‘Acid Latino (Sonido Real)’ is dizzyingly heady and addictively intoxicating. Deep bass grooves from her trusted TB-303 pulse beneath piano chords to hypnotic effect. While her 2018 debut, ‘Aguas Congo’, leaned more into a chilled ambience, and its follow-up ‘Astroturismo’ in 2021 is celestially minimal, her latest is a pummelling, incisive, salsa-rave fest made for the dancefloor.

Paula Soto Carmona lives in Milan, where she pursued a career as a professional DJ around a decade ago. While the title of her EP explicitly references her Latin heritage, she doesn’t want her identity reduced as a tool for differentiation: “I’m not making music to say ‘I’m South American but I live in Europe, and that’s why I use percussion this way or I sing in Spanish’,” she says.

It’s important for her to stress this; she’s spent her professional life chasing freedom, and won’t tolerate confinement. “My approach is chameleonic. What drives me is being able to experiment and try different things.”

To see Paula live is a translation of this philosophy. At London’s Carpet Shop in January, she performed her first all-night-long set: there’s no stagnancy; her timing is flawless, with shuddering builds and heady climaxes cloaked in acid polish. Her mixes are at once surprising yet satisfyingly smooth.

Far from the cold, damp arches of Peckham, the setting couldn’t be more different when we catch up with Paula in the sun-drenched city of Santiago, Chile's capital. She’s just brought ‘Acid Latino (Sonido Real)’ to her home city for the first time, DJing alongside her longtime friends Nico Castro and Pepo Fernandez at their seminal house and disco party, Paraíso. Paula’s set was the perfect homecoming, held on a downtown rooftop terrace with 360-degree views of the city. It was an emotional return; made even more symbolic by the panoramic set-up.

“They put the DJ booth in the middle of the crowd,” she recalls. “To see all those people looking at me as if to say you made it, to hear people say they were proud of me. It’s something I never thought would happen here.”

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Cue the tears—telling of her tempestuous relationship with her country. Growing up, it was incredibly difficult to make money from electronic music in Santiago. The scene was in its infancy when she was a teenager, with seminal German-Chilean DJ Ricardo Villalobos influencing its establishment. Villalobos and his family were exiled during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s, forcing them to Germany. He maintained deep ties to Chile throughout his career, shaping a local acid house scene in the late ’90s and early ’00s.

“He played an important role in bringing ‘music of the future’ [to Chile], what was happening in Germany at that moment,” Paula says.

But the scene never shook its reliance on European links; it was exclusive to people who could afford to see international DJs play expensive sets, or to those who had spent time in Europe themselves. “It was somewhat elitist, for people who had the opportunity to travel, and had the right connections,” said Paula. Lacking that access, she felt unable to pursue dance music professionally.

DJing was a hobby she’d do on the side of a job as a wardrobe stylist at a TV channel, and she soon grew disillusioned with her life. “I felt a huge sense of frustration that I couldn’t do anything related to music,” she recalls.

She first began DJing at clandestine afterparties in the city’s Bellavista district, where she was hired as a bartender, handing out vodka mixers disguised in water bottles. Whenever time allowed, she’d jump on the decks, quickly learning the ropes and instantly falling in love with mixing. She’d played drums in some indie bands before, but wanted to take DJing further.

She organised her own parties and tried to drive the scene forward herself, but felt that crowds weren’t paying enough attention to the music and too much attention to social hierarchies. Chileans outside the scene dismissed electronic music as a rich kid’s thing, while snobbish attitudes were prevalent within it. “I felt the social divide. There wasn’t support, everyone was doing their own thing, each party was closed in their boxes,” recounts Paula. “You were either too poor or too posh.”

She deeply disagreed with this attitude: “At the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter on the dancefloor. It affected me a lot.”

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Exasperated, she booked a one-way ticket to Barcelona with a three-month tourist visa to the Schengen area. She packed a suitcase and a handful of records, determined to carve out a career as a DJ.

“Santiago is a valley, the Andes mountains are everywhere you look. That affected me, not being able to have a broader perspective. We were, and still are, so far away,” she says.

Paula set up a base in Milan via Barcelona, where she quickly immersed herself in the Italian club scene. As she’d outstayed her visa and didn’t want any problems on the borders, she began tirelessly playing sets around Italy in 2015. In a few years, she had already achieved two Milan residencies: one in a club called Rocket, where she was booked as part of a women-only collective that played weekly Friday sets. This was followed by a stint in Apollo alongside the Rollover Djs. “I met a lot of artists I liked without needing to leave Italy,” she said, naming Gerd Janson, Hercules & Love Affair, Patrick Holland, Young Marco and Floating Points, as some of the artists that helped her build international connections.

She diligently worked the Italian circuit, eventually obtaining a visa and breaking through internationally. She was the first Chilean artist to land a BBC Radio 1 residency in 2023, and set up her own club night, Hola Mundo, which has stopped in Milan, London and Paris. Last year, she debuted her Essential Mix on Radio 1, which was nominated for the Essential Mix of the Year at this year’s Radio 1’s Dance Awards.

On the dancefloors of Europe, she’d finally found what she so desperately craved in Chile: a sense of freedom and equality.

“No one cared if you had more money or not. For me, that’s what electronic music represents: a space where everyone can come together.” she reflects. “And that’s what I see in Europe—a more sincere way of enjoying dancing.”

After facing so many barriers in Chile, the ethos of community and togetherness is central in ‘Acid Latino (Sonido Real)’; the single ‘Feel 2 Real’ is a euphoric acid house ode to her journey, an auditory navigation of her finding herself. Singing in English and incorporating some piano chords to give it a poppier edge, she describes the EP as a bridge, mixing Latin house with Chicago, acid, and an intense 4x4 beat to match the coming togetherness nurtured by the club.

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Paula’s grounding as a drummer is evident throughout; the track ‘De2 Locura’ has a cumbia twist to the percussive elements, with hi-hats echoing the sound of a guacharaca shaker. “I also added some subtle percussive touches with the Roland Super JV-1080” she explains. With ‘Ibis’, she was looking for a more tribal house feel, with beats throwing back to conga-heavy Afro-Cubano genres.

Finishing the EP signified a shift in Paula’s attitude towards Chile, moving on from past resentment. “I matured,” she reflects. “[The EP] is a union of what I was, and what I am when I’m here as a South American, with the connection of the European sounds I developed in Milan.”

It’s the first time Paula’s returned to Chile in five years, and she’s sensed a positive shift.

“The scene here in Chile is changing a lot, it’s exciting to see” she smiles. “There are more opportunities, more mixing between crowds. There’s still a long way to go, but I can see [the difference].”

She’s thrilled that ‘Acid Latino’ has been so warmly received at home. “The perception towards me as an artist has changed. So many people have connected with the EP,” she says. “With respect to all the anger I had before, this trip has been super important. It’s like healing my soul, you know?”

Now, Paula is readying herself to go full throttle the year ahead with a slew of European festival dates including Barcelona’s Sónar, Hamburg’s Habitat, and London’s GALA. Despite performing at some of the world’s most esteemed electronic events, they say your home crowd is your toughest—and, as she triumphantly returns from Santiago, it feels like the greatest challenge of 2025 is already behind her.

‘Acid Latino (Sonido Real)’ is out now, get it here

Charis McGowan is a freelance writer, follow her on Bluesky