Awesome party last night, Q&A Part One and Bandcamp Friday today!
Shout-outs too x
Hi friends - hope all good :)
Thanks so much for making the last qd listening party of 2024 such a special one - amazing turn-out and such nice chat!
Always great to see you all and I’m so so grateful for all your support - much of the music world is becoming increasing tough for artists and labels - so being able to connect so closely with people that truly care about music, and are willing to properly support it by buying physical/digital copies, means more than I can say.
quiet details and our artists (who we can pay properly because of you) are beyond grateful - we all know how difficult things are with the ever-higher cost of living - so choosing to support us shows an incredible commitment to and love of music.
We’ll keep going as long as we can, so glad to have you with us!
Bandcamp Friday today - big thanks to them for waiving their fees so more goes to the artists - qd27 Sanger and Sanger (which is still at the top of of their ambient charts after reaching it yesterday!) digital half-price and some CDs with the long-form edition (plus download) still left. Support your other favourite artists/labels too!
Please check out our other releases as well, stocks on some getting very low x
Now here’s Part One of our Q&A with Joe and Luke - big thanks to them, enjoy!
Please tell us a bit about your background and history in music.
Joe:
I began learning the piano when I was very young, but I wasn’t a particularly good student. After hearing a Jerry Lee Lewis record when I was probably about ten or eleven, I started trying to play rock’n’roll and blues. As a teenager I played in pubs, sometimes for money. I joined an indie band as a keyboard player, then a prog rock band, then formed a funk three-piece in Devon where I went to art college, and continued to play different genres in various outfits through my 20’s. For a while, I was the keyboard player for Mac Tontoh and the Kete Warriors. Mac was a founder member of the Ghanaian Afro-Rock band Osibisa, and had toured the world in the 60s and 70s. In the late 90s I stayed with him for a month in Ghana, and rehearsed with his new young 14-piece band, then embarked on two UK tours in 1999 and 2000, before the band fell apart. It was an exhilarating, yet exhausting experience!
Meanwhile I was collecting a menagerie of other instruments to play with, and also experimenting with making my own, which I still sometimes do.
During the 2000’s I moved to Japan with my wife and daughters. I love it here but I miss the vibrant music scene in the UK. After I’d been here a few years I bought a shakuhachi in a junk shop and was immediately attracted to it because it was so different to all the other instruments I’d played. I found a teacher nearby and began studying, and nearly thirteen years later I’m still seeing him regularly for lessons. Much of the repertoire is for solo playing, and it’s associated with meditation and Zen Buddhism. It’s been a wonderfully challenging and enriching experience.
Luke:
I’ve been involved in music for a while now. Started releasing techno records in the early 2000s. Around that time I was studying sound art at university, which was around the time computers were becoming capable of running DSP and multitracking audio.
I’ve been recording and releasing pretty regularly ever since!
Please can you describe a bit about your general philosophy and process as an artist
Joe:
It’s changed a lot over the years, depending on the music I’ve been making, or what/who I’ve been involved with. As a shakuhachi player, I think essentially I’m trying to make beautiful sounds. As to what constitutes beauty… Well, the practice of playing “Honkyoku” has influenced me a lot. Hon (origin) Kyoku (piece of music) are traditional/classical, usually solo, pieces for the shakuhachi. Some of them date back several centuries. As one plays these pieces, over the months and years more depth of meaning is discovered in the notes and silences, more attention is paid to the formation of the sounds, and gradually one achieves a greater appreciation of the aesthetic. It’s never-ending. The importance of meaningfulness and beauty in making sounds has filtered into the other ways I make music.
Luke:
My philosophy in music-making is rooted in embracing limitations and creativity. I have a somewhat perverse enjoyment in using a minimal set of tools, focusing on exploring their edge potential and pushing their limits. I'm also constantly finding inspiration through record digging and my approach to creating music kind of mirrors this. As a result, I’ve never been confined to a single style and generally it keeps the process fresh and inspiring.
What does quiet details mean to you, and how did you use that to approach the album?
I’m a long way from the music scene in the UK, so my first impressions of qd were from the album my brother put out with you, “Salt Water Motifs”. Apart from the brilliant music (not that I’m biased) I was very impressed with the care and attention that had gone into producing the CD. It’s a lovely artifact. When Luke suggested that qd might be interested in our collaboration, I was thrilled!
Luke:
For me it means something that doesn’t give you the full panoramic view on the first journey.
The combination of raw Shakuhachi and (unpredicatble) analogue electronics really lends itself naturally to this theme, as both have thier own sonic ‘imperfections’ (although I see these more as attributes), which reveal more about themselves on subsequent listens.
Now shout-outs!
Huge thanks as always to dear friend of qd, Neil Mason over at Moonbuilding - in this week’s essential reading he not only gives a lovely review of qd27 but also says:
The last release of the year from Alex Gold’s ever brilliant label comes from friend of Moonbuilding Luke Sanger and his brother Joseph. This time last year I said quiet details was head and shoulders the Label Of The Year, you’d be hard pushed to pick a label that’s trumped it this year. There’s been some sensational releases – Veryan’s ‘One Universal Breath’, James Bernard’s ‘Only Now’, Plant43’s ‘The Unfading Spark’, Loula Yorke’s incredible ‘speak, thou vast and venerable head’… I feel like I’m just about to list every release this year, but Alex really has been totally on the money once again. And ‘Exotopia’ is no exception.
What a legend - please do support Neil and Moonbuilding how ever you can - proper journalism is essential to grassroots, independent music - we all need to look out for each other!
qd22 Veryan
The always wonderful marine eyes including Veryan in her final women of ambient mix of the year - a brilliant series I highly recommend. She’s also got new music out today with her awesome husband James Bernard (of qd21 Only Now - a few of the second run still left!) as Awakened Souls - check!
And finally thanks to Lippy Kid, another brilliant curator and good friend of qd - he included a Veryan track in his favourites of 2024 Electronic Odyssey mix - thanks mate!
So thanks again friends - much love and have a great weekend!
Alex
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