{"id":4307,"date":"2001-05-03T17:05:15","date_gmt":"2001-05-04T00:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/?p=4307"},"modified":"2013-10-03T17:09:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T00:09:18","slug":"dj-quest-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/?p=4307","title":{"rendered":"DJ Quest Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

DJ Quest of Live Human & Bullet Proof Space Travelers<\/span><\/b><\/span>
\n\"dj_quest_live_human\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A member of both Live Human and the DJ crew Bullet Proof Space Travelers, DJ
\nQuest also actively DJ’ and appears on tracks by himself (you can peep him on
\nthe Hip Hop Slam release ‘Turntables By The Bay’).\u00a0 Fresh off a European
\ntour, The Peach finally caught up with him to chat for a minute…<\/p>\n

Peach: Tell me all the boring stuff: how you met, how the group got started,
\nhow you ended up on Matador, etc.<\/p>\n

DJ Quest: The group got started in 1996, and basically the group came
\ntogether from playing shows. I was playing shows at the time, doing my thing
\nwith Eddie K, and we just had a gang of people that would come on and do a
\nshow, do the shows with us: LOC (beatboxer), Paradise (raggamuffin\/dancehall
\nkind of rapper) that used to come through. Around that time we met Justin
\nSmith, a bass player…we met him at the Last Day Saloon. He started coming
\naround; doing some shows with us. He introduced me to Albert and Andrew.
\nThe thing was…getting all those people together was kind of a hassle. It
\nwas kind of a hassle to get everyone to rehearse. I was looking for
\nsomething even more solid instead of just having people come through.<\/p>\n

P: Did you have a regular gig? Like a weekly or something?<\/p>\n

Quest: I’ve never done that because I think that’s kind of boring.<\/p>\n

P: I meant as far as a weekly gig where random people could just come
\nthrough.<\/p>\n

Q: Naw, but since I started playing, I’ve always had at least one show a
\nmonth-stuff that comes up here and there.<\/p>\n

P: (joking) Since like ’87…<\/p>\n

Q: Roughly since like ’92 or ’93. I was deeper in the battle scene-djing
\nwith rap groups. Anyway, that took me to the stage of working with emcees
\nand the live act thing. That whole thing just got me more beserk about
\nwanting to play with more people and getting a real act together. Although
\nthe shows we were doing before the Live Human stuff was the real shit-and I
\nlove a lot of the shows back then still. A few of the shows that I did with
\nEddie K stand out in my mind. Like I said, I just wanted to do something
\nmore solid. Albert had already been playing with Andrew for a few years
\ndoing more of a free jazz ensemble with this guy Charles. They were working
\non some stuff and touring with a dance company called Contraband. Anyway,
\nwhen Albert came back from tour with Contraband, Justin (the other bass
\nplayer) introduced me to him. We just hooked up from the first rehearsal I
\nhad with those guys-and it wasn’t even a rehearsal…we weren’t even setting
\nup to play a show or anything. We just wanted to play music.<\/p>\n

P: Just like a jam session.<\/p>\n

Q: And it was just mind blowing. To me it was like, whoa…you could just
\ncombine certain sequences that sould like they might be electric and at the
\nsame time sound natural. And the whole combo was just weird. And that’s
\nall. A week later we decided to make a record, to make the first record. I
\nwanted to get in the studio and just put a record together just to have
\nsomething solid. Just so that we could have a more official…<\/p>\n

P: Documentation?<\/p>\n

Q: Right, as a group or as the beginning of a group. We played our first
\nshow at the Cactus Club in San Jose and that…just the response was
\nincredible. Not that the crowd went wild…there was just silence-they went
\nsilent.<\/p>\n

P: They were mesmerized.<\/p>\n

Q: There was total silence in the whole room. I kind of knew what the
\nresponse was gonna be, but it was like, “damn”. You can’t always predict the
\naudience. Sometimes they dance, sometimes they shout, do whatever. And
\nsometimes we come out and attack and sometimes also throughout the night
\nthere might be different factors that fail to play a part in the making the
\nshow tight. If we go on too early in the night and there’s someone else
\nplaying earlier and they go on too long…a bunch of different things…you
\ndon’t want to burn the crowd out too much. There are different things I’m
\nlearning to watch out for now. Because I learned throughout the past years
\nwhere I need to play and when and how loud.
\nWe mostly freestyle the shows, but as we more and more we have segments that
\nare somewhat arranged a little more-not necessarily in a song way, but in
\nmore of the tone of what it is we’re playing…we know what that is, we know
\nwhen it comes back around and when we come to a break…wherever we want to
\ntake it to. Basically, we’ve just been dissecting the music more, trying to
\ncompose a little more. It’s tricky…if you’re at the show if you just sit
\nthere in the audience, you’ll hear stuff that sounds happy, sounds sad,
\nsounds twisted, sounds mad…<\/p>\n

P: Did you guys have an immediate vibe the first time you played together, or
\ndid you have to work to achieve that?<\/p>\n

Q: That’s the thing, we never felt like we had to work through anything. The
\nmusic was never perfect…I fuck up quite a bit. Playing on stage, I do
\nsomething that I feel stupid about afterwards…if there’s a certain groove
\ngoing and then I stop-that kind of fucks it up. And I’ve done that…we all
\nhave. From day one, we all knew we wanted to work to get to a point where
\nit’s just clean. We’re doing that a bit more now, but back then, it was just
\nlike, “see what happens”. We’re still like every rehearsal, just play
\nanything anywhere and it goes somewhere usually. There’s this thing we like
\nto call “the 3-D effect” because after you warm up and start playing and get
\ninto it and it’s like all of a sudden there’s this feeling that I get that
\nwhatever the music is that’s coming out of the speakers and the instruments,
\nI feel like this thing kind of elevates above your head and starts spinning
\naround and twisting-like a spectrum of all kinds of images and stuff. It’s
\nnot really there, but you hear it. You see it with your ears. You know what
\nI mean? It’s something happening…we like to call that “the 3-D effect”.
\nThat’s what we play for…just to get that feeling.<\/p>\n

P: Do you think that when you’re playing, you think more like a musician?
\nWell, I guess the best DJs think like musicians anyway, but do you feel like
\nyou’re one piece of this whole collage, or are you mainly thinking about what
\nyou’re going to do?<\/p>\n

Q: Both. When I come to a tricky point in the set that I know something has
\nto happen, then I have to use my skills, my “DJ mind”. When we’re all in a
\ngroove and people are dancing, then I have to think as a group. So I have to
\nthink both ways.<\/p>\n

P: You were talking earlier about reading the crowd. So what would you do if
\nthere’s a moment when you know the crowd is beat down from the previous
\nact-what is your plan of attack when you go out on stage? Do you come out
\nhype? or more subtle?<\/p>\n

Q: There is no plan. We usually don’t have a plan, and that’s the nice
\nthing about it. We make up a plan when we’re there, but just from the past
\nexperiences…we take what we’ve seen in the past and just apply that there
\nat that point-you know what I mean? It could be that the crowd is burnt out
\nfrom the other act, but once we come on, it’ll start jumpin’.<\/p>\n

P: That’s what I mean…do you take a “pep-them-up” kind of approach?<\/p>\n

Q: It depends on who it is. If it’s an audience that’s never heard us
\nbefore, it would be good to go easy, you know what I’m saying? Some people
\nreact differently to what they see on stage. If it’s a Live Human crowd and
\nmaybe they were bored because there was another act before Live Human, maybe
\nthey’ll get excited when we come on.<\/p>\n

P: Well, if it’s your crowd, they’re always going to get excited when you
\ncome on…<\/p>\n

Q: Of course, but maybe not…we try. We try to make those decisions at the
\nlast minute. I have also learned, apart from what your question is, that you
\nhave to have volume control and little techinical things…that play a big
\npart in what’s going on in the room. As a DJ, if I have a sound that’s going
\nto be earshocking on the turntables…if I’m going to drop it and the people
\nhaven’t been hearing anything like that for awhile, it could either wake them
\nup, or it could piss them off. I have to watch my levels…all that shit
\nplays a big part. I’m now realizing the lights in the room have a big effect
\ntoo. I don’t really know what works best as far as lighting, but I’ve been
\nnoticing certain colors and certain moods work for certain tracks-and certain
\nlights fuck up my eyes too when I’m trying to do something. Like strobe
\nlights sometimes are too crazy. I love strobe lights when we come to a point
\na point in a track where it’s kind of a climax-I like all that shit. So many
\ndetails…<\/p>\n

P: Do you guys do your own lighting?<\/p>\n

Q: Nah. Hopefully one day we’ll have enough money to go and the road and
\nhave mini-light shows to go with the music. Sometimes they do a really good
\njob, but you never know…<\/p>\n

P: Most shows I’ve seen of yours…the audience is very quiet, concentrating.<\/p>\n

Q: In San Francisco they’re breaking away from that and starting to get more
\ninto the rocking or dancing…a lot more. But the average Live Human virgin
\nlistener doesn’t know how to react quite yet…and I don’t blame them. I
\nwouldn’t know how to react either. You see a DJ up on stage, and you assume
\nit’s going to be a certain type of sound…and it’s not like that at all.
\nIt’s kind of like all of us tweaking around with our shit. I like being able
\nto be on stage, and people are paying attention. Just drop the beat, drop
\neverything and just go off on some shit-some bizarre electronic sounds or
\nsomething. I like that. The nerd in me comes out. There’s a lot of that
\nthat’s not really that musical, but it’s technical stuff that i’ve learned
\nthroughout the years…how to scratch a certain sound with a delay and make
\nthe delay work for me so that the sound keeps going, and when I’m done with
\nthe phrase and it comes back around. We all do that sort of stuff.<\/p>\n

P: Like experimenting with sound?<\/p>\n

Q: Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

P: What do you think about other bands that have a DJ in the band purely for
\nlike a cosmetic reason?<\/p>\n

Q: A cosmetic reason???<\/p>\n

P: Where they’ll have a like a really dope DJ, and they’ll just use him to
\nscratch in a word every now and then?<\/p>\n

Q: I don’t think about them. I think everybody that plays music deserves a
\nplace in the industry somewhere, and some people just have to get in where
\nyou fit in. And that’s not necessarily the most creative thing to do, I
\nthink. I’ve done that sort of things with bands before. I worked with MCM
\nand the Monster around the time I first started messing around with bands.
\n>From my experience, when I first started playing with bands, I didn’t want to
\nbe in the background all the time. I guess if you’re a wack DJ, it’s okay to
\nbe in the back…I just didn’t feel like that was my place. I worked for my
\nstuff, I practice a lot, and I felt like what I was doing deserved a little
\nmore show then it was getting. I like being able to work with other people
\nas an ensemble, but I felt at the time, DJs weren’t getting enough props and
\nthat’s one of my reasons for wanting to step up a little bit. Albert and
\nAndrew…these guys can play drums and bass…I have to be able to show that
\nI can work my tables just as well. I don’t think that DJs that work with
\nbands are totally wack, but it’s not something I would do…I have to clear
\nthat up…there’s a certain sound that’s called a “hip hop band” which sounds
\nlike wack drums-drums that have no fat kicks- and a lot of wack lyrics. And
\nthat’s the typical “hip hop band”. It’s a certain sound. Whenever you hear
\nlike really thin drums and bass and usually a DJ doing some wack shit and
\nusually a crazy white kid screaming on the mic-rapping or wanting to rap-<\/p>\n

P: How about Limp Bizkit? Do they fall into that category or no?<\/p>\n

Q: Kinda. I don’t really know their music, so I can only speak so much
\nabout it. I think to make it easier to understand, there’s a certain
\nrock-hip hop sound to the drums<\/p>\n

I feel kind of lucky too that I’ve been able to hook up with the people that
\nI play with because Albert for one, he’s a really heavy-foot drummer and he’s
\nsolid, a solid drummer. He has a lot of hip hop style in his playing and I
\nthink it makes it easier to feel it. But there are so many people who are
\ndoing “DJ in a band”, it’s ridiculous. To me, it’s not about being in a band
\nbecause it’s a trendy thing. The Live Human stuff…we didn’t come together
\nbecause we were like, “okay, we have to rehearse and get here and there…”
\nIt just happened. We didn’t plan on that at all.<\/p>\n

P: Organic.<\/p>\n

Q: Yeah, we liked what we heard and kept doing it. And for that reason, I
\ndon’t consider myself a hip hop DJ either. To a point I do, because I still
\nplay hip hop and I love a lot of hip hop stuff, but I’ve grown from that.
\nHip hop is cool, but it’s been kind of stale for the past 10 years anyway.
\nThere’s some dope west coast stuff coming out…things here and there, but
\nit’s not like in ’86 where every record coming out was like, DAMN.<\/p>\n

P: You had to get it.<\/p>\n

Q: Beats were just fat and rhymes were simple yet clever. Funky.
\nI don’t feel like I can rely on hip hop to vibe off of, get inspired off of.<\/p>\n

P: How did you end up getting record deals?<\/p>\n

Q: It was kind of an accident. We put a record out. The first record was
\nLive Human featuring DJ Quest-came out in early ’97. A label in the UK,
\nFatcat Records, heard it and wanted to license a few tracks off of it. We
\nlicensed four tracks for a 12″ which came out on Fatcat Records, and they
\nwanted to put out an album. And we were like, well..we’ve always been
\nstruggling and never really had the means to do anything on that scale, so we
\nwere like, okay, these guys are willing to put up the money, we’re willing to
\nplay some music, record it, and see what happens. The Monostereois album
\ncame out, and Matador heard it. They heard the album and they heard of Live
\nHuman, and they were interested in doing something with us. And since the
\nalbum was licensed to Fatcat, but it was not in the states-it was European
\nand the world license only-we were like, we need someone to put out music out
\nover here because we had the record out for awhile and the other things that
\nwe had done for Fatcat that nobody even heard of over here, so we thought we
\nneeded to move on. Matador was willing to take us on and give us a shot.
\nThat’s how that happened-from linking with one label, music got out in Europe
\nand Matador heard of us through the European releases. So far so good.<\/p>\n

P: So you’re working on another record? You said you guys were working more
\non song “structure”<\/p>\n

Q: It’s going to be half and half, you know what I mean? Still some of the
\nstuff that we know already that we’ve been playing around with. We’ll just
\nclean it up and make it tighter and record some of that. But half of the
\nalbum is going to be like the Elefish album that doesn’t go anywhere …but
\nit goes everywhere. Whatever we do on the record is going to be a lot of
\nexperimenting. Not to say that it’s so much of an experiment because we know
\nthat whatever we end up putting on the record…we’ll hear that it’s working.
\nBut the techiniques and the formulas for recording the album are going to be
\nin ways similar to what we did last time. But I think that we already have
\nabout half the stuff that’s going to go on there that we feel pretty strong
\nabout.<\/p>\n

P: Where are you going to record?<\/p>\n

Q: I don’t know. We’re going to record a lot of stuff here (Quest has a home
\nstudio), record some stuff at Albert’s, record maybe again at the same studio
\nwhere we’ve recorded the past two albums.<\/p>\n

P: Where is that?<\/p>\n

Q: In the Oakland Hills. It’s actually a friend’s house and studio. It’s a
\nreally nice place at the top of the hill. A view of the entire Bay Area.
\nWhenever you get bored, just go outside.<\/p>\n

P: Wow, friends in high places…<\/p>\n

Q: Very high. I feel priviledged when I go up there. I don’t want to come
\nhome. Naw, you know…it makes the recording process a little smoother. The
\nway we did the past couple of records, we went up there, stayed up there,
\nrecorded, mixed and everything like that. I think this time I want to do a
\nlittle bit more pre-production. Work out some of the structure to the album
\nand so when we get there we can just lay it down and get it over with.<\/p>\n

P: Do you forsee it having any emcees or is that just totally not what Live
\nHuman is about and it’s never going to be like that?<\/p>\n

Q: We have played shows where emcees have come on and it’s fun.<\/p>\n

P: But it’s just not the essence.<\/p>\n

Q: Yeah, I think that the moment that we have emcees on the album, we’re
\ngoing to fall into the same hip hop band category.<\/p>\n

P: NO!<\/p>\n

Q: Eventually, maybe we’ll feel like doing that but at this time, I think we
\nwant to keep it instrumental. It’s so…many colors. You know what I mean?
\nIt’s exciting to me to be playing this music. I feel like keep it
\ninstrumental. The moment you start putting in vocals, then a track becomes
\n“about” something. Instead of being a track for pure listening. That you
\ncan feel; make it whatever you want it to be about.<\/p>\n

P: like jazz.<\/p>\n

Q: pretty much.<\/p>\n

P: What’s going on with the Space Travelers…what’s happened to everybody?<\/p>\n

Q: Well, we have an album coming out. March. On Stray Records. It’s a
\ncrazy album. It was kind of weird because we didn’t really work on it
\ntogether-we all did our own parts. I did a couple of tracks on it. Eddie De
\nf did a couple of tracks, Marz did a couple of tracks. And Eddie K did most
\nof the album. He’s the emcee. The idea that we have is that we don’t want
\nit to be a “turntabilist” album.<\/p>\n

P: Is Eddie K rhyming on ALL the tracks?<\/p>\n

Q: No, he’s not rhyming on all the tracks. About half the tracks are DJ
\ntracks, but they’re not like “turntabilist”…which are tracks just made up
\nof scratch sounds. That stuff is cool, but I think all of us appreciate the
\nart of making beats a lot more than perpetrating with turntable-made beats.
\nI mean that stuff is cool, but we’ve done that already too. The album is
\ngoing to be a trip because it’s half turntable and half emcee, but everything
\nis blended together. Not like one side rap and one side DJ songs, but all
\nthe songs…<\/p>\n

P: are intertwined?<\/p>\n

Q: yeah.<\/p>\n

P: Oh, I see. Okay, so what equipment do you use?<\/p>\n

Q: I don’t use Vestax.<\/p>\n

P: Should I put that in big letters?<\/p>\n

Q: I just don’t use Vestax. I use 1200s. I like the Rane.<\/p>\n

P: You’re endorsed by them?<\/p>\n

Q: I’m glad I am, cause it’s a really dope mixer. I’ve had that mixer for
\ntwo years…I’ve dropped it and everything…it’s a fat mixer.<\/p>\n

P: What model?<\/p>\n

Q: TTM-54
\nMy favorite mixers have been a Gemini 12A, the 2200…they had the first
\nsmall mixer that came out
\npeach aside: (i may have gotten those model numbers wrong…i’m not too
\nfamiliar with them).<\/p>\n

P: What do you use when you’re making beats?<\/p>\n

Q: I use a MPC. I like simple stuff. I’m not really a computer nerd. The
\nMPC is pretty simple to use…you can start out with a loop and add beats to
\nit or you can start out with beats and add loops to it…and then I transfer
\nmy stuff to a Roland 1600. So, I use 1200s, I use the Rane mixer.<\/p>\n

_____________<\/p>\n

DJ Quest would like whoever is using djquest@aol.com to give him his name
\nback…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DJ Quest of Live Human & Bullet Proof Space Travelers A member of both Live Human and the DJ crew Bullet Proof Space Travelers, DJ Quest also actively DJ’ and appears on tracks by himself (you can peep him on the Hip Hop Slam release ‘Turntables By The Bay’).\u00a0 Fresh off a European tour, The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3048,2568],"tags":[3056,646,447,949],"class_list":["post-4307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features-archive","category-reinvention-of-the-wheel","tag-bullet-proof-space-travelers","tag-dj-quest","tag-interview","tag-live-human"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4310,"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4307\/revisions\/4310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegiantpeachnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}