BEAM 1.3/Innerviews/Quirk

QUIRK
Electronic Sonic Junkies
Interview by Michael Gosney

Quirk's 1999 album Quality Control on Matsuri is a milestone in the new impossible-to-categorize music emerging from the psy-trance cybercircles - funky grooves, digital soundz, steel guitar, vocals, on and on. With their second release, Quirk combines many musical styles, impeccable production, and a wide-ranging appeal. Just listen. This is something truly new, and it gets better with time. Mark Allen, who six years ago co-founded the now-legendary Return to the Source party at the Rocket Club in London with his partner Chris Decker, has been working with DJ/producer Tim Healy for over 3 years on the Quirk dimension and the fruit of this union is one the year's best electronic releases.

Quirk Interview Helicopter

Touchin down at the Russ Street Space Station, San Francisco with Quirk producers Tim Healy & Mark Allen...

V Tim and Mark Allen, welcome to San Francisco. You blew them away the other night. Wonderful show. How did you feel about it?

MA Yeah. Really enjoyed it. Nice. Good cross-section of people there.

TH Really good feedback, both when we were playing and afterwards. Loads of people saying they loved it.

V Have you played many live sets with the new material?

TH Done a few.

V Not in America. First time here, certainly in San Francisco, first time ever for us. We played New Year’s Eve.

TH A classic rock venue in London where many of my icons have played, so it was great to be on stage there.

V Which one’s that?

TH Brixton Academy.

V New Year’s Eve, yeah, about five minutes after midnight, which was pretty amazing. About 3000 people.

V Fabulous. So this is the second Quirk album.

Both Yes.

V And the Quirk project’s been around for couple years?

TH Three years.

V And Mark you were one of the Return to the Source founders?

MA That’s right. That goes back about six years, now.

V Was that the original club?

MA Yes. That was myself and Chris Decker, Phil and Janice, our other partners. That began at the Rocket Club in London, I think pretty much six years to the day, actually. We’ve got our sixth birthday next weekend. Which we’re doing a live set at as well.

V Really? Rocket Club was the place, but Return to the Source was a night?

MA That’s right. A monthly.

V And it went for six years? I thought ... didn’t it discontinue for a period?

MA We’ve had a few chops and changes. We moved from Rocket to Fridge for a long time, then there was a slight lull. And then it was at Bagleys, which is a Central London venue. Then back to the Rocket, so we returned to our source about 8 months ago.

V How would you characterize the Return to the Source scene?

MA I guess it began as a realization from Chris Decker and myself. Him as a bandmember and a promoter of parties in Amsterdam, and myself as a DJ being involved in more underground parties called Pagan, which go back another 2 or 3 years before that. We both just agreed that the time was right to push it a little bit further into the mainstream, and these amazing parties and T.I.P. parties had been going on for 2 or 3 years, just really kind of exclusively 200 or 300 people. We just knew there were so many people that were into the sound that it was time to go on and expose it to a wider audience, and that’s what we did. And since then there’s now many clones of the concept, you know, taking it overground really was part of that initial explosion.

V Certainly had a very good reputation worldwide. There’ve been several compilations put out.

MA Yes, I think if you include the recent ambient single CD, there’s, I think, six compilations.

V Who is the publisher of those?

MA It’s a mixed story, actually. The first couple we teamed up with Volume, which is a big indie and dance compiler. I don’t know if you remember their series. They had a whole load of different compilations runs. And they unfortunately went bankrupt about 4 years ago. Then we teamed up with Positiva, which is the dance division of EMI, for one album. Since then we’ve been independent. We do it just in-house, really, which has meant a smaller overall distribution, but a much more satisfactory setup. We know what we’re dealing with.

V Was that double, that big boxed-set on EMI?

MA The last double one, yes, the Sacred Sites. That was with EMI.

V Well, Tim, how did you guys hook up? You’d been a DJ.

TH And a musician. I’d been writing loads of music of all sorts as long as I can remember. In particular, electronic music since about 1993. After doing that for a year or so, I got to meet Mark through the Pagan parties, which was what Mark used to do before Return to the Source, which was kind of semi-legendary in London. That sort of top underground he was describing, with a few hundred people, and four DJs throughout the night. And yeah, we got to meet through that, really.

The first track that we did together, we finished it, and Mark had a gig in Israel that weekend. And he took it to play to the people there. The promoter also ran the major label coming out of Israel producing trance and that type, and the guy wanted it immediately. So we had to do a follow-up, and so that was great. So since then we decided to keep the formula and come out and do an album together, that was our first album.

V That was like 2 years ago, the first one.

TH (Nods.)

V ‘97. How was that album received?

MA Good.

TH We’ve had loads of, particularly, unusually, the ambient opener tune, which we’ve had loads of feedback on. We had been paying a lot of attention to the more dancy stuff because that was in our sets regularly. And we remember doing it, but we kind of forgot about this lovely little ambient intro, and that’s been licensed by some film company over here for a series that’s being shot in Las Vegas; a detective kind of thing.

V A TV series?

TH Yeah, yeah. They’re using it in the credits or something, which is quite wicked. So wait to hear on that one.

V Great.

MA At the time it was really quite risquÈ in the concept of the trance producers’ album. The first flow of artist albums were very much DJ toolkits with lots of dancefloor-friendly tracks, whereas we’d decided at the outset not to do that, and to do an album that would really explore the different areas. Hopefully you’d carry on being interested for a lot longer than just a banging dance-hits album. And that’s pretty much been the feedback we’ve had. People do appreciate it for that.

V So in other words, rather than a typical dance album that you’re saying is kind of a DJ toolkit, the way people compose it out of different segments that you can mix.

TH Well, no, I’d go further than that. I’d say that they’re actually purposely writing eight full-on dance tunes and then that would become an album, which is great as a collection of tunes. But we felt we wanted to genuinely take you out of your armchair up to a groove, a bit further full-on, maybe, and then wind you down by the end. So it was a full journey, and it also meant that if you come back from a party or something, maybe you’ve had your fill of blaring electronic sounds, it would take you there over half-an-hour, and then wind you down again afterwards. I don’t know, I often get back from parties and someone puts on a full-on dance tape, and it’s like, "Oh, man, haven’t you got anything else?" And to be honest, I think you actually listen to more not-really-full-on dance music more of the time than you do the really full-on stuff, because it’s very intense and hectic, and that’s great in a night club with a huge sound system with lots of people on the same vibe, but very different like now, for example, when you’d maybe just want something that’s eclectic, electronic, unusual, psychedelic, but not necessarily banging.

V So your first album is a first step in that direction.

TH Yeah, absolutely.

V And this new album is totally a tweaked out total concept journey kind of piece.

MA Yeah, well it’s the same sort of idea of lowering you in and taking you somewhere hopefully somewhere slightly unexpected, and leaving you comfortable at the end.

V Start off with "Paradise Pills," and taking on.

MA Well, "Sleazy Listening," actually, which features Tim’s vocals for the first time on one of our tracks.

TH In my Larry Blackmon style, a-la Cameo. Then we go from there through some small funky grooves to a full-on tune or two, and then wind you down and then lay you gently on the ground with "Salvation.

V Yeah. Really great piece, and I know that Matsuri expressed some real excitement about it as kind of a breakthrough album.

MA They’ve been very supportive.

V I think what we’re all looking for, I mean there’s so much incredible creativity and innovation that’s been bubbling and brewing there for ten years now, and to just cross over and get into a little larger market. The time seems right. People are really interested.

So the whole business of performing, which of course has always had such a major role to play, live performance, in selling music and exposing people to music. And that seems like the transition as the music is going through some transitions of mixing different styles and broadening a little bit, it seems like the DJ paradigm is changing, too. The mystique of the DJ’s knowledge of the music has got to open up to other people, and the producers are coming out a little bit more in public it seems. I mean, I’m kind of wondering if you’re observing that.

TH Definitely. I think the days of it being -- what was it -- the phrase was always "faceless techno bollocks" in the UK. People used to wear t-shirts saying exactly that -- proud of the fact that you didn’t know who was writing the stuff, you just went to the parties. And it was some DJ in the booth over there playing all these tunes from across Europe, in general, and some from the States.

But, I don’t know, now, I think you need to be able to try and associate things.
We’ve kind of forgot. We got so far away from rock n’ roll during the start of techno and dance music, and that was celebrated.		And you kind of forgot that there were definite elements of that that really, really worked, and why can’t you use some, and try and give yourself whatever --
-- a look, a feel -- and go beyond just being the soundsmiths that are on this white label record in someone’s DJ box.

MA Also the line between producer and DJ is getting more and more blurred. Very few DJ’s haven’t had a go at producing something, and many producers have been turning their hands to mixing. And the way we do our stage set is very much a hybrid of DJ skills and producer values, and Tim is a sampler. He basically has a sampler setup full of grooves and extra sound textures, and numerous bits and pieces that we discovered. And I’m mixing from CD, sort of backing grooves and outtakes and different versions of our tracks. We build that up layer upon layer spontaneously, so it has the elements of a DJ set, responding to the crowd. But we’ve got a finite sonic palette that we’ve created in our studio. That’s a really good combination for us.

V Well, it seems like you guys have the makings of a really successful live electronic act. Will you be playing some more dates here in the US?

MA Nothing here immediately. We’re going to come back for Burning Man. And if that all comes together as planned, we’ll probably be in Nantucket for a gig; possibly New York. Almost certainly L.A. the week after Burning Man, and obviously Burning Man

V Great. So you’ll be bringing your gear out there?

MA Yeah. Definitely.

V Cool. Well, I wanted to ask you one final question on the performance. Have you guys experimented at all -- you’re so obviously playing on the electronic, you know the computer voices, and you obviously have some real chops with computers, and I wonder how much you’ve experimented with multimedia and the possibility of using multimedia in performance environments?

TH At our first live gig, at the Fridge in London, we had two video screens, and a VJ, and we actually travelled with a VJ for touring our first album. And this worked really well, but we found there were also lots of problems, where you’d get somewhere and they wouldn’t find the right equipment for the VJ. And this poor guy very often seemed to be more or less twiddling his thumbs. Or we’d get to play at 6 in the morning when the sun’s risen so you can’t see his visuals at all. And there were lots of [compressed little?] problems and stuff like that. But whenever we do a big show, like at the Academy and things, at New Year, we always make sure he’s there doing his thing. And he actually had a customized whole Quirk journey’s worth of bizarre visuals for us, most of which was not computer animated. It was mostly film footage, chops and samples, and really quite unusual, and, shall we say, quirky.

I mean, we definitely have done that. At this first gig we had that. We also hired spacesuits from a place called Angels in the middle of London, which is the most famous fancy dress heart there. They have six floors of ridiculous costumes. The sci-fi section -- I had a green PVC suit, and he had a giant silver spacesuit. I had this helmet that looked like I’d just crash-landed. Half of it was falling off and the tube was all broken. And we came onto our kit which was like a spaceship with six florescent monitors at the front, and these screens behind. Behind us we had this ludicrous spiral structure about this high, and it was a full spiral, but like a disco ball. Each level of the spiral was a layer of wood and it had a strip of mirror along it. So you can imagine, you’ve got this wheel of mirror of different angles. And a laser was trained on that.

MA Lasers scanning up and down it, just scanning it

TH Someone just held the camera up and videoed the whole thing, and we watched it afterwards, we were just like, "God, it really was quite ridiculous."

MA Unfortunately there isn’t always a budget for that.

V Well, you know, I could see 2000, a Quirk tour that’s got some juice behind it -- get some of these ideas...

MA We’ve certainly got the ideas.

V Great. Well, what’s next? Any new projects or ventures you want to mention?

MA We’ve got a few tracks tucked up our sleeve. We need to make some more inquiries about that, so we’ll have to keep quiet on some of those at the moment. Gig-wise, we’re at the Return to the Source 6th birthday next weekend. New Year’s we’re booked to play in Bali 2000, which is, hopefully, going to be a big festival there.

V Where’s that?

MA I’m not exactly sure where in Bali, but somewhere out in nature.

TH You can check it out at Bali2000.com. They’re hoping to do a week-long festival there of a real cross-selection of music, but mostly electronic, with hopefully, a headlining act, which they’ve yet to confirm, but it’s apparently in the pipeline, which is great.

MA The next thing to look forward to is trying to fix these American dates. We’ve got a date in Tokyo semi-confirmed, and where else are we playing? Edinburgh?

TH Yeah. And there’s the festivals at Solipse, which you’ll be playing [looks at Mark].

MA I’ll be DJing the Saturday immediately before the August 11th eclipse in Cornwall. Then I’ll have to get straight back up to Hungary to be there the day before the actual eclipse, and I’ll stay there for the rest of that festival.

V Well, it’s an exciting year. Glad to connect with you here in San Francisco.

MA Likewise.

V Wish you the best on quality control, getting out to the reaches of the planet.

MA Thanks for your support.

V See you soon.

TH Cheers.

and their label Matsuri