Pawsa's Body Talk

PAWSA is in it for the love of the game. In fact, that might be one of the few things you can actually discern about the internationally renowned tech-house producer in conversation. Ask him about his DJ sets, festival gigs, or even his appearance on the soundtrack for F1: The Movie, and his response will almost always strike the same refrain: “My attention is on the music,” he tells me. “I’m so focused on the music that everything else just fades into the background.”

To say PAWSA is elusive would be an understatement. When we chat over Zoom in March, the 34-year-old (born David Esekhile) is camera-off, speaking from his home in the United Kingdom. He just played a show in Paris a few days prior, though his propulsive spirit leaves no room for contemplation. “I live day to day when it comes to how shows are, just living in the moment and not really reflecting too much on individual moments and trying to stay present,” says PAWSA. OK, so he has no interest in reliving the past. What about his upcoming calendar — his return to Coachella this month, plus spring weekends in Ibiza, Monaco, and Brussels? “I try not to have high expectations for one show over another,” he says.

When your records are this fun — full of crisp beats, snappy hooks, and bass lines that unfurl with the force of a fire hose — you can get away with letting the music do the talking. But in order to understand how someone so private managed to become the poster child for modern tech-house music (not to mention an honoree on NYLON’s inaugural Dance 100 list celebrating the DJs and producers ruling nightlife right now), he’ll have to make an exception just this once. “I was instinctively drawn to music early on, and just how it would change the atmosphere of a space, how sound could affect people so directly without needing to explain itself,” he offers. “That still interests me now — how something can feel precise or emotional or immediate all at once.”

“House music is physical and direct. There’s something powerful about repetition and rhythm. It has a particular relationship with the body.”

PAWSA who was raised in London by a Nigerian father and Irish mother, was single-minded in his pursuit of the DJ life. He bought his first decks in 2010, when he was still a teenager. Why not pick up a guitar or a set of drumsticks instead, as his peers were no doubt doing? “I was fascinated by how the right track at the right moment could completely change the feeling in a room, and the joy of sharing moments with people and creating memories,” he says. “You can shape energy in real time.”

And no genre fills this order better than house music. “It’s physical and direct. There’s something powerful about repetition and rhythm,” he says. “It has a particular relationship with the body. If it’s done properly, it can feel simple on the surface, but there’s a lot going on underneath.”

By 2014, PAWSA was fully embedded into the London music scene, releasing early EPs on the tastemaking label Lost Records and getting cosigns from global house icons like Green Velvet. That same year he met Michael Bibi, a fellow Brit and a well-known tech-house DJ and producer who started throwing parties under the Solid Grooves banner. The two bonded over a shared goal of “wanting to build something durable” — to foster the kind of long-term artist development that felt was lacking in their own scene. So, in 2015, they co-founded their own record label, Solid Grooves Records. In the 11 years since, the label has bolstered the careers of acts like Dennis Cruz, ANOTR, Ben Sterling, and Beltran; has racked up more than 50 million Spotify streams according to the label; hosted numerous artist residencies around the globe; and was named Best Label at DJ Mag’s Best of British Awards 2023.

“For me, a label is about curation and creating a home for work that fits a certain standard and a certain identity,” says PAWSA. “A label should feel like a language, not just a release schedule.”

Judging by the way Cruz speaks of signing with the label, mission accomplished. “What drew me to Solid Grooves was the shared passion for music, the good energy, and a sound that we all have in common — one that really defines the label and what it stands for,” the Spanish DJ-producer tells NYLON over email. From PAWSA, he’s learned there’s power in “less is more,” he says. “The simplicity in the way David makes music is something else — it’s so refined but still so effective, and that’s not easy to do. He’s a genius at it, honestly.”

Cruz describes PAWSA as being “a bit shy” when they first met — no surprises there — but PAWSA’s walls were evidently no match for Cruz, and within minutes, the two were doubled over in laughter, acting as if they were old friends. “It felt like we’d known each other forever, like there was already that natural connection from the start. It made everything easy,” says Cruz. “In Solid, we genuinely celebrate each other’s wins. It feels like family in the truest sense.”

“You can quite easily wreck a painting by doing too much. You can’t just remove something like you can in music. It taught me how to accept whatever comes out and be less of a perfectionist.”

Cut to 2026: PAWSA is now a mainstay on all the buzziest festival lineups and routinely sells out venues like Manchester’s The Warehouse Project and Brooklyn Storehouse. You will not be shocked to learn that when it comes to his live sets (as with most things), PAWSA would rather not be pinned down — on his YouTube, you can find him doing seven-hour, hit-filled festival sets just as easily as vinyl-only sessions livestreamed from home. He leans on proverbial crate-digging sites like Bandcamp and Discogs to flesh out his sonic universe. “I wouldn’t play a set that’s 100% my music — it doesn’t have an arc if I did that,” he says. “I like to balance it with older music that can support the groove. Maybe they’re not going to be the highlights of the set or songs that people will remember, but they definitely support the structure of the sound that I’m trying to explore and refine.”

He does, however, like to treat his sets as a testing ground for unreleased music. The DJ booth is just another laboratory: There, he can field test the new tracks, both with an audience and the soundsystem, before taking them back to the studio and refining the mixes. “If the sound is good and the mix is good,” he says, “then it will translate.”

“I was instinctively drawn to how sound could affect people so directly without needing to explain itself.”

Such perfectionist-minded tweaking might suggest an always-on, 24/7 grind. But unlike some of his peers, who have made hustle culture a quintessential part of their brand, the Brit lives a rather quiet life when he’s offstage and out of the studio. He’s married, but keeps his private life off Instagram. He spends his downtime golfing and painting. “We’re just normal guys, honestly,” Cruz says of their friendship. “We go out for dinner. We used to hit the gym between shows, just doing everyday things when we can. I teach him Spanish, and we laugh a lot. He’s super curious, always asking about pronunciation and wanting to get it right.”

Most of PAWSA’s single covers are original artworks he made himself — scrolling through his Spotify page is like walking through a small gallery show. (He dreams of having his own studio space for painting and assembling a solo exhibition one day.) His approach to creating a cover is not dissimilar to that of making music: Sometimes, he’ll have an idea straightaway; other times, it comes to him after endless tinkering. “What painting helped me to do is accept imperfections,” PAWSA says. “Almost every painting I make, I don’t like until it’s two, three years old.”

“You can quite easily wreck a painting by doing too much,” he continues, newly animated — turns out the key to getting him talking might just be two words: oil pastels. Minimalism might come easy to him in music, but not in art. “A lot of the times when I go through photos of a half-finished painting, I prefer it half-finished than actually finished,” he adds. “But at the time, you’re always trying to add more, add more, and that’s something you can’t do with that medium. You can’t just remove something like you can remove something in music. It taught me how to accept whatever comes out and be less of a perfectionist.”

And, in a way, it’s taught him how to listen — how to soak it all up. Which, even from his perch at the party, is exactly what he prefers to do: “[Painting] sharpens my eye in the same way music sharpens my ear,” he says, before receding back into silence, leaving us both to stew in the stillness before the next question. If you’re going to be a man of few words, you might as well make them count.

Top image credit: Dries Van Noten jacket; Talent’s own top, pants and sunglasses; Nike shoes.