At the age of 25, Paula began her career as DJ in Germany. In 1995, she met
Gudrun Gut, founder of Berlin electronic music collective Oceanclub. Paula joined the collective and got a residency at the
Tresor club for the Oceanclub's Sunday night events, alongside DJs and producers such as
Thomas Fehlmann (The Orb), Mike Vamp and bands like
Sun Electric. As well as frequent gigs in
Berlin, she has played sets from Detroit to Moscow to
Buenos Aires and extensively through Europe, at places such as Rote Sonne (
Munich), Culture Box (
Copenhagen), Zukunft (
Zürich) and Le Triptyque (Paris) to name just a few. She has also played at a wide range of international festivals such as
Festival Internacional de Benicàssim Valencia,
MUTEK,
Popkomm,
Love Parade and Detroit's
DEMF. Paula didn't return to Chile until 1996 when her brothers, managed by producer "Microman", began to schedule some events in Chile. Some of the DJs taking part included
Ricardo Villalobos,
Luciano (Lucien Nicolet), and the German
Uwe Schmidt (Atom Heart), all key figures in the development and spread of the electronic music movement in Chile. Her first release for
Monika Enterprise (Gudrun Gut's label) came in the shape of a 12", the "Foxy EP" in 2003. Also in 2003, with years of experience as a DJ and several records and remixes, Chica Paula released her first album, "42 mädchen" (42 Girls), again on the German label Monika Enterprise, under the name "Chica and the Folder". Her main supporter was German producer "Max Loderbauer", a member of the electronic music group
Sun Electric. The album "42 mädchen" include some collaborators and sounds from a variety of different genres:
Punk,
traditional Tibetan music and
electropop. One of the tracks includes the last words of
Salvador Allende in
La Moneda Palace, the voice of
Jorge Gonzalez, and a remix of
Brian Eno's "I'll come running". After the release of her first album, Paula kept performing as a DJ and took part in the German-Chilean lineup of the 2004
Mutek Festival in
Valparaiso, and the same year participated in the Techno-Femenino festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Four years after the release of her first album came the second Chica Paula and the Folder album "Under the Balcony", along with a 12" called "Mixes From The Balcony" featuring remixes by Paula's friend, the Chilean
Ricardo Villalobos, and Swiss DJ Sonja Moonear. She said in an interview: "As a DJ, I play more dance music, more of the moment, music with groove. The rest (making music) is a different story... Being a DJ is a public thing, making music is something more personal". Paula also took part in a performance of Chilean-born German artists at the 2006 Sundeck Festival in Muelle Barón,
Valparaíso, along with Max Loderbauer, her partner in the project "Chica and the Folder". On top of her work as a DJ, producer, performer and remixer, Paula is currently also active as an advisor on the subject of electronic music to the
Goethe Institut in Mexico, for whom she is managing a new radio project. ==Discography==