A FOODIE DJ/PRODUCER HOPING TO GIVE HIS FANS AN ELECTRONIC FEAST
On November 27, Baltimore-native Paul Cefalu, aka Lunchbox, unleashed his debut album Smorgasbord, a compilation of different sounds and sequences that promises to take us on a trip through different genres within the electronic music realm.
“I am excited about it,” Lunchbox told me. “You’re going to listen to a lot of boom bop, funky disco house, U.K. dubstep, and a little bit of trap here and there.”
One of the main reasons behind this buffet of styles featured in Smorgasbord is that Lunchbox doesn’t like to genre-cast his music, and, as he says, “at this point, I produce what I want to produce. Unfortunately, I love every genre.” From the 50s, 60s, and 70s classic rock to 80s disco, to early 2000s trance with Dutch legends Tiësto and Armin van Buuren, to even death metal because of the genre’s edgy guitar riffs. Moreover, all of these flavors and spices still needed a very important ingredient to make an exquisite recipe, and that special element was dubstep.
“I always had an eye for electronic music like Fatboy Slim and early 2000s Tiësto. I was a big fan when Armin Van Buuren started with his State of Trance together with Tiësto’s Clublife. I always had a neck for that music and then I was introduced to dubstep at about 2008. I’ve never heard music like that before. It was definitely an eye-opener.”
However, although dubstep holds a special place in his heart, mostly because it was the most predominant genre you could find on his sets during his 15-year-DJ-adventure as Pcef, Cefalu’s musical influences were first driven by chords and progressions, more specifically the guitar. The now-producer has been playing the instrument for about 18 years, from taking lessons at a local music store to music theory classes throughout high school and college. Furthermore, he even dabbled at the saxophone before jumping behind the turntables. Unfortunately, he had to suddenly scratch this condiment out of his cooking book as its “taste” would freak his dog out.
As a live performer, he was one of the first DJs of his age group. Despite knowing how fundamental music was in his life, he didn’t know (or I guess didn’t expect) that live performances would also become a massive part of his life journey. However, as many DJs often say, once you taste the energy that comes from the crowd, once you see people enjoying and “vibing” to your music choices, the adrenaline you absorb is very addictive. Nevertheless, at that time, the thought of producing his tracks had never crossed his mind.
“I knew how to DJ, and I was really good at that,” he explained. “But, beyond that, I never thought about producing music myself. I was just loving the atmosphere and loving the events. However, about two and a half years ago, I didn’t really have an artistic outlet for myself. Then I sat back and thought that maybe producing and working on music would be interesting.”
When it comes to his cookware, or in musical terms, his Digital Audio Workplace (DAW), it wasn’t until January of 2018 that Cefalu, now under his Lunchbox alias, used one for the first time. Moreover, his hunger for learning how to properly cook tracks was such that he even considered moving to Florida to enroll at Full Sail, a university known for its non-traditional bachelor’s degrees suchlike Recording Arts and Music Production. Nonetheless, according to him, he wasn’t ready to leave Baltimore and, therefore, entered an entry online course at Icon Collective, a school in California, where he was introduced to Ableton — one of the many DAWs out there.
“Three months of them pretty much introducing me to Ableton,” he stated. “That’s pretty much the only formal education that I have with the DAW. Everything else has been either taught through friends or leaning by myself. The music always flowed. I just needed to learn the technology to get it down on “digital paper.”
Fast-forward a couple of months into producing, all he needed was some praises from his now-manager Mitch and fellow producer Yuni Wa to give him the boost to continue to pursue his career, now officially under the name of Lunchbox, a term that he and his buddies would use to call each other to describe different situations. Also, the fact that he loves food and that his family has been in the food industry for 119 years certainly adds uniqueness and genuineness to Lunchbox as an alias.
Tying it back to his music, apart from Smorgasbord, his time in the “electronic kitchen” has resulted in some interesting recipes. According to him, the tracks that don’t fit into the LP’s style will most likely be included in his house music EP called House Salad. Even though he knows that producing and releasing music from different electronic subgenres will perhaps make it harder for him to trademark his sound, he cites Michigan-native producer GRiZ as one of his inspirations.
“GRiZ is a person that is very good at it,” he tells me. “He is very good at keeping the crowd live while switching genres and keeping people on their feet without polarizing a crowd. I look up to him. That’s how I envision how I would approach my music. At this point, I don’t want to be the house guy. I don’t want to be Lunchbox, the dubstep guy.”
His album may be dropping on Thanksgiving, and it may well be served as a nice dessert. However, Lunchbox certainly doesn’t want to stop there. As his popularity increases, his brand will most likely pull a Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey and expand too. For that, some of his future goals revolve around brushing up his guitar skills so that he can implement it on his productions, more collaborations with vocalists and fellow producers, and even going back to play public live sets after a six-year hiatus — a combination of live instruments with the mid-90s scratching style. But, for now, you can find him in the studio working on his music and his label Acute Visions.
“I like to manage my expectations,” he confessed. “I want people to remember the context of my music productions as something that they could relate to. I want my music, no matter what particular song or genre, to be very relatable to people. I’d like my music to be something that might polarize people, but never in a negative way. I’m not trying to be the next biggest producer. I just want to make my imprint doing the thing that I love.”
Click on the link below and start jamming to Smorgasbord:
