Valentin: Kris is absolutely right. The dance audience is not that huge when you put it in front of the "pop" audience and that's not necessarily a bad thing, and as you alluded to, some of the things that we're trying to say about love and music and positive attitude, even though a lot of the music tends to be dark, that's more for the power to get that emotion across, but we want to get those messages out to a lot of people, and probably the way to do it, and we enjoy doing it, is to spread our wings a bit and try some different things that may bring it more into the pop thing. So yes. There is definitely a grand scheme in place here (laughing).
Dom: Val, how do you balance what you do for other artists with your focus on QED?
Valentin: I have two words for you (laughing) NO SLEEP!! That's actually partially true, it's not that I don't make a good effort to get a good day's work in. I try to lead a pretty healthy lifestyle, exercise, eat well and take my vitamins everyday.
But there's a lot of times when I am driven crazy by my own efforts trying to get a lot of things done, just because I really work from inspiration.
I don't just do projects just to get the money from them, or because someone tells me it's a good idea. I will do projects if I feel an inspiration towards them, because I feel that is the only way I can add value to something. So to that end I am constantly running around with all these ideas in my head and when the inspiration is flowing it's actually very hard to get sleep.
Kristine: Also as far as QED, that is what we are. It's not something that musicians do, it's what we are, it's what we enjoy. It's not something we think of as work...
Valentin: Well it is pretty hard work (both laugh). If you work from inspiration it's more compelling than anything else could be. You could have a deadline, but sometimes deadlines slip because you need to wait for the inspiration. The balance is to try to be organized as you would in any business or job, you have to be committed to it, you have to work hard, you have to be in there doing it, take care of yourself and do anything a normal person would have to do. Aside from that you have to keep the inspiration flowing and work at it.
Just like any other person who has their hands in a lot of different things in their business. You do it because you love it, you're inspired by whatever success you get to keep driving forward, and outside of that you have to be organized and keep in shape to do a lot of work.
Dom: Do you have a favorite performance you've done over the past 12 months?
Kristine: We were actually talking about that.. I think one of my very favorites and not specifically because of performance, but it was a show for Party 105 on Long Island. Party 105 was one of the first stations, in fact DJ Theo started Love Bites in Long Island (Lucas Prata had given him the track), as well as Justin Testa at Masspool in Boston around the same time. Anyway, that performance was great because there was a lot of people, as well as a lot of performers, and we got to meet a lot of people, a lot of people that we have performed with since then. All these great people, Kim Sozzi, Lucas Prata, Jes from Motorcycle and more. The whole gambit of performers that do these shows and everybody was so nice and we enjoyed it so much. When we got on to perform, everyone knew the words to the songs, just to look down and see the crowd singing all the words to Love Bites AND Hardly a Day was so amazing.
Boston has also been a lot of fun for us with their support of our music.
Valentin: Miami has been a lot of fun too. We did a show in Miami where, again, it was also about the artists, some we had met before, and some we were meeting for the first time. Universally, you included, people we have met in dance music, and I can't think of an exception, we have made some great new contacts and friendships among the DJs, radio people, the performers. I hope what we are doing and some of the other artists are doing raises the awareness that they are good people and are making good music.
Dom: People laugh when I tell them my favorite band is Black Sabbath, since as a DJ I spin dance music.
Val and
Kristine: Count us among the laughing, but that's cool though.
Dom: What music is in your CD changer that might surprise us?
Kristine: Val and I definitely have very eclectic tastes in music, so we take a look at our CD tower and say "Wow! That's really weird!!" One of the funny things we had in there was a Cartoon Classics CD... you'd watch Bugs Bunny, and you'd listen to all these great pieces of classical music.
Valentin: I've based my entire life on the teachings of Bugs Bunny, you can't go wrong.
Val and Kris: A variety from Shawn Colvin, Deep Forest, Journey, Def Leppard, Rush, Van Halen, Aphex Twin.
Valentin: You know what it is? I tend to be attracted to ANY style of music from classical to country to jazz to hip-hop to pop or house, whatever it is, if it's well crafted.
