Quarion breaks it down0
Posted In FEATURES
In a few days Quarion is finally going to be back in Aus for a tour and we’re pretty darn excited to see him play. We caught one of his live sets two years ago at Tape Club in Berlin and it was really something special. Someone told us his dj sets are even better and shortly after we managed to get him on the Deepcast. Well he proved to be a serious dj with an incredible knowledge/passion for music, coming up with one of our favourite mixes.
Anyway, we got a chance to catch up with Q over the weekend to talk about a track that literally changed his life. ‘Karasu’ was released almost 6 years ago on a little label called Drumpoet Community and it was this track that kick started his career under the Quarion alias.
Karasu was one of the first big records for you under your Quarion alias right? How did it end up on Drumpoet Community?
Actually, “Karasu” was my first track as “Quarion” as I’ve been producing various electronic music styles with the “Ianeq” moniker before. My first release was on a Mental Groove compilation back in 1999 and since then, I’ve put out a couple of 12 inches on Mental Groove, A Few Among Others and Arm as well as an EP with Snax on Get Physical.
The story behind “Karasu” goes like this: Back in 2005, I had an album out with the “Enterplay” project, a group that featured my friend Rosario from Geneva and also DJ Kent from Force Of Nature (Japan). The CD didn’t receive much feedback, but we still managed to set up a tour in 2006 with dates in Switzerland, Belgium, England and Japan. I’ve been fascinated with the land of the rising sun since I was a child so it felt like a dream come true when we went there.
Needless to say, I was absolutely mesmerized by the country and its people during my stay…
When I came back to Switzerland, I wanted to make a track that would somehow reflect my Japan experience, but it took me a while to head to the studio. It was almost as if I still needed to process all the information before being able to compose again.
I remember that my first attempt was very bad! Thankfully, I scraped my first draft quickly and started with a totally new track that ended being “Karasu”. I knew after a few days that this track was special and that it required me taking a new moniker. That’s also the time when I got a call from Alex Dallas: a few months ago, when Enterplay played in Zurich, Alex told me that he was setting up a new label named “Drumpoet Community” and that he would love to get some new music from me. Now he was just calling to tell me again how much he wanted to hear some fresh stuff, so I sent him a demo of “Karasu” straight away.
Alex called me the next day while I was working and told me he was totally blown away from the track and wanted to release it as soon as possible. It was an incredible moment…
What effect did the EP have from your point of view? Were you happy with how the release went?
Well, it sounds a bit corny but “Karasu” really changed my life! It opened all the doors for me: I started receiving amazing feedbacks from very famous DJ’s, I got remix requests and most of all it helped me to get in the Berlin scene because I moved there a few weeks after the track came out and all the DJ’s seemed to know it! I’ll always remember my first night out since I moved to the capital: we went to Watergate with a couple of friends and I heard “Karasu” TWICE during the night, on the same dancefloor… I just couldn’t believe what was happening.
Tell us about the track itself, what program/gear did you use to make it?
Like I mentioned earlier, my first attempt at making music when I came back from Japan was pretty bad, so I needed a fresh start: I haven’t been using my MPC 3000 for a while so I turned it up and loaded drum samples from my various projects. I came up pretty quickly with this intricate and pounding beat, which I was very happy with. I usually loop my Drum patterns on 4 or 8 bars, but the “Karasu” beat actually evolves on 16 bars because I felt the need to “stretch” the structure.
When the Drum programming was done, I started working on the music and I decided to compose with Logic because I was a bit fed up with Ableton Live at the time. I wanted to have a certain “epic” feel about the track but in a way that it remains “deep”, sort of like Âme’s earlier stuff. I came up quickly with the idea of a simple 2-chord change but wasn’t very happy with the main sounds so I think I recorded the bassline first, using my trusty ARP AXXE analog synth. I also added some extra ornaments to the drums (white noise & ring-modulator-type noises) that were evolving on 16 or 32 bars patterns and gave the whole basis an even more evolving feel.
But I was still unhappy with the main chord sound, so I tried going through the patches of Native Instrument’s Reaktor until I found something quite interesting in the “Photone” synth. I messed with the controls a bit and came up with this short but full-sounding chord. I then found this 3-note riff that I decided to let run on its own timing (One and a half beat) so that it would give this polyrhythmic effect. I just needed to be careful that the note pitches in sync with the chord change otherwise it would sound out of tune…
At this moment, I already felt that the track was going in a very interesting direction and I wanted to add a melody. I usually jam on the keyboard when I need a lead hook but for “Karasu”, I remember that I wrote the melody via the mouse, moving notes on the grid until it sounded right.
I kept adding bits and pieces here and there but most of the groundwork was laid out in 3 days I think. I also remember that the pad sounds which appears during the melody is from Logic’s “ES 2” and that I played the strings/synth sound (in the break) with the ARP AXXE.
Mixing-wise, I was working with a Mackie analog mixer at the time, so I had every sound assigned to a channel. I also used a TC electronic reverb as an auxiliary. I just remember that I spent a lot of time working on the mixing because I really felt the track needed extra attention in that field.
Are any parts of this record sampled? Where/how did you use the samples?
I’m a big fan of Herbie Hancock and there’s this solo album he recorded for the Japanese market that I’ve been searching for years, “Dedication”. I finally found it when I was in Tokyo. I heard about this piece named “Nobu”, which is basically him jamming on the Rhodes and String ensemble while an ARP runs a percussive sequence in the background. It really sounds like Techno although it was recorded in 1974…
I knew from the start that I would use some subtle elements of “Nobu” on my piece: it’s this sort of flanged high percussive sound that runs through the whole track. I recorded about 5 seconds of the original, sliced each sound then made a much longer pattern out of it. I also took a part where you can hear the String Ensemble.
Four years later, how far has Karasu come? How far has Quarion come and what’s install for the future?
Well, I still think that “Karasu” might be my best track ever, in the sense that for the first time in my life, I had an idea in my head or a feeling I wanted to express and that I managed to concretize it exactly how I envisioned it…
There really was something magical about the whole process and that’s why I still feel so many emotions when I listen to “Karasu” today.
I think I came a long way since then, although there are certain elements of my new tracks that are reminiscent to “Karasu”. Right now, I somehow feel that I’m coming full circle: after years of experimenting with different genres, I’m going in a more deep and musical direction again. I’m particularly fond of *Callisto” which appears on my new Retreat release. A very deep and melancholic track that is quite similar to “Karasu” in a way…
As we mentioned earlier, Quarion will be playing a few dates in Aus over the next week or two. More importantly he’ll be headlining the Blow Your Own Way Boat Party on new years day with deepcasters Myles Mac & Andy Hart, Christian Vance, Craig McWhinney and the Francis Inferno Orchestra. The weather is going to be 38 degrees too 
