Paul James Nolan’s (@pauljamesnolan) The Cube is the first episode in a new progressive house performance series recorded live inside The Quirky Quarter in Liverpool. The set places Nolan inside a projection-mapped infinity cube designed around sacred geometry, Shipibo-inspired patterns, cymatics, and visuals from TAS Visuals, turning the room into something closer to a ritual space than a standard filmed DJ set.
It is a big visual idea, but the point still comes back to the music: a long-form progressive house journey built around patience, immersion, and the slow shaping of collective energy.
The project came together through a small team built around photographer Nick Mizen, James Chapman, TAS Visuals, The Quirky Quarter team, and the technical support needed to bring CDJs, a V10 mixer, and a full visual environment into one room for one night of filming.
That behind-the-scenes context is the most important thing to focus on here because The Cube is not just a performance capture with better lighting. It is an attempt to treat DJing, visuals, room design, and sound as one connected experience.
In the interview below, Nolan talks about DJing as something ritualistic, sacred, and rooted in communal dance long before it became a modern nightlife format. His answers move through Cream in Liverpool, Argentina, Hernan Cattaneo, Warung Beach Club, and the responsibility DJs have for holding a room’s emotional and physical state through sound.
The throughline is clear: for Nolan, the best sets happen when the ego gets out of the way and the DJ becomes a channel for the music, the room, and the people inside it.
Interview With Paul James Nolan
Do you ever think of DJing as something ritualistic or sacred, or does that language feel too heavy for you?
It is absolutely ritualistic and sacred. In fact, it is just about the most ancient, tribal, and primeval thing we do. We just dressed it up with lights, smoke machines, video walls, and expanded the scale using massive sound systems and technology.
Ancient tribes and civilizations have been doing this since the dawn of humanity. Communal dance, communal spaces, drumming, and inducing trance-like states have always been deeply healing to humanity.
It is one of the many reasons why so many of us attend electronic music events to this day and will continue to do so for the rest of time.
Has there ever been a night where the energy in the room felt bigger than music, something shared, even spiritual?
So many times.
I remember that being the case when I first started going to Cream in Liverpool in the late ’90s. You felt part of something bigger than just yourself. I felt, personally, like it was the first place I ever truly fit in, and I very quickly became part of the community on the dance floor there.
When that community comes together and all gets on the same team, on the same page, on the dance floor, it is like you are building a spaceship, or to put it more accurately, opening a channel to the divine.
I realized during my time in Argentina that those early experiences at Cream were my first true spiritual awakenings. I got to almost relive them and experience a few new ones when going to incredible events like Sunset Strip in Buenos Aires, or seeing Hernan Cattaneo play at Forja in Cordoba.
What do you think people are looking for when they come out to dance: escapism, connection, catharsis?
All of the above and more.
Often you do not even know what you are looking for, but you know something is bubbling up underneath the surface. I have done so much healing work on myself on the dance floor over my nearly 30 years devoted to electronic music and culture.
I have transformed so many times, literally walking off the dance floor a slightly better version of myself than the one that walked onto it.
I truly believe electronic music is one of the ways we will heal and transform humanity. There is literally nothing else like it for breaking down social, societal, and ideological barriers.
Do you have any personal rituals before a set, during, or after that help you tap into the right headspace?
Intention is everything. I like to be quiet before a set and take some time alone.
I make sure everything is rigorously prepped in terms of my music, playlists, key detection, hot cues, memory cues, and loop points. This is so I can focus fully on the narrative, the storytelling, and being able to fully connect with the crowd and the energy in the room.
Visualization is key. I always imagine and visualize the set going well, the music fully connecting with people, and at every turn, I do whatever I can to get out of my own way. I hold an intention internally that every record will impact people in some way.
How do you see your role in shaping collective energy during a set?
It is absolutely massive. We have such a responsibility as DJs.
One thing that has broken my heart has been watching the industry, and the perception of it, drift toward us apparently being some sort of cringeworthy attention whores. We as artists, curators, and facilitators for people’s experience and transformation are so much more than that.
We are literally holding the nervous systems of every single person in that crowd in the palms of our hands.
So we need to select music, sequence it, present it, and offer it to people with their highest good in mind. We also need to make sure the sound systems we play on are able to project all of that in the best possible way without causing dysregulation to people’s nervous systems.
None of this works if we are putting the audience into fight or flight.
Have you ever witnessed something on a dance floor that made you see DJing differently?
So many times, and recently.
I was privileged enough to be at one of the final Warung Beach Club events, watching my dear friends Hernan Cattaneo and Patrice Baumel play for thirteen and a half hours.
How that journey unwound itself, and the sheer presence, intention, patience, and mastery to tell the story they told over such a long period of time without ever losing control of the room, and without losing their own presence in the process, is something that I will never forget.
That night and morning fundamentally changed who I am as an artist.
When you look back at your most powerful nights behind the decks, what do they have in common?
I got out of the way.
All of my best sets have almost felt like out-of-body experiences. There is a feeling of emptiness, of no mind. It is complete flow.
But it is deeper than that. It is like an opening. A surrender. You open yourself up to whatever wants to move through you, and the records and the inspiration just move through you.
Native Americans called this being a Hollow Bone, an empty channel for Source to move through you, and you allow yourself to be used as an instrument by the divine.
You have to lovingly usher your ego out of the room in order to do this, and I am not always successful. But when I am, there is nothing else like it. I am completely in service to the audience and to the music itself.
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
