With his single "Satisfaction" blowing up big in the breaks world, Q, aka Uberzone, is preparing for the upcoming August release of his new CD Ideology. It's the first artist album in six years and Q has gone back to his roots, rediscovering his original musical motivations. One of the pioneers of the West Coast breaks scene, we chatted with Q right before his groundbreaking set at Ultra this year.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: In the breaks world, there seems to be a distinction between
the dirty and gritty sound on the East Coast and the clean/pristine
sound of the UK. Listening to Ideology, it sounds like a combination,
maybe a new West Coast sound for breaks.
Q (Uberzone): That's one of the things that I'm really happy about
on the new record. I've had the chance to go back to the studio and
really readjust my sound and reestablish my niche.
RS: Do you hear a real difference between the East Coast sound
and the West Coast sound?
Uberzone: I do, and a lot of things have been changing in both
scenes. Throughout my career, when I go out to the clubs and I go to
the record stores and listen to other records, I sort of listen to
things with the intention of trying to find what not to write. I've
said that in the past but it's very important for me to kind of have
my own sound, and when I eventually started Uberzone, I wanted to go a
little left field and really be able to find the bounds of that and
explore that.
RS: You've been pretty instrumental on the West Coast in
defining the sound. Why don't you give me a difference of West Coast
breaks versus East Coast breaks versus UK breaks?
Uberzone: There's a lot of cultural influences that come into play
and for me, it's hard to delineate specifically, because when I'm
touring I go through the UK and hear similarities and influences of
all the different scenes amongst the different scenes. Florida has a
very, very heavy electro influence which stems from the Miami bass
movement which started in the late 80s. The UK sound was more
established through the drum and bass scene and the West Coast is more
from the San Francisco house break sort of vibe. So you have some of
the electro elements of what's going on in Florida and you have some
of the drum and bass elements that might be an influence from the UK,
but on the West Coast I think it's a little bit more of a hip-hop and
a little bit more of a house influence in the break scene with the
vocal samples and in the backbeats and breakbeats that we use.
RS: You're seen as one of the pioneers of the West Coast break
scene, who would you say were your contemporaries in the scene?
Uberzone: Well when I first started out, the Basement Friends was
doing great stuff in San Francisco, as were the Hardkiss brothers. DJ
Dan and the guys who were playing breaks back then were big influences
to me.
RS: Its been six years since your last artist album – why the long wait?
Uberzone: After the last record was released and I was touring
behind it, that was right about the time that the industry really
started changing and rather than rush back in to trying to do another
artist album and figure out how I wanted to market it and how I wanted
to put it out, I decided to do a couple of mix CDs. I did the digital
mix and the Y4K in 2004 and really got into touring and wanted to take
it back to the clubs and revisit the whole reason why I started. I
toured pretty heavily and waited to see what was going to happen with
the downloading market and the way that the music industry was going
to kind of restructure. Now I'm coming out of that whole thing with a
new deal and a new way of doing things. I started writing the new
album last fall and then went on tour last summer. Then I came back
and finished it over the last three or four months. So it's really
only been about the last year and a half that I have been working on
this new music.
RS: Do you find yourself touring and testing your tracks out on the crowd?
Uberzone: I do, and I have had the good fortune of trying them out
internationally in the last couple of years, too. It's important to
see the way that different crowds react, so I just played at Fabric a
couple of weeks ago and played some of the new tracks. When you're in
the studio, you have a perception of the way you think things are
going to work in a club, but when you go try them out you can be
pleasantly surprised sometimes to find out which tracks were working
and which ones weren't. That's been a really good thing to do in the
last few months.
RS: Are you working with Logic, Nuendo, Protools?
Uberzone: Nuendo and Wavelab for multi-track editing and universal
audio power plug-ins.
RS: When you're playing out are you using vinyl, CD, or laptop?
Uberzone: I'm using a laptop running Ableton and I still have Davie
Dave doing the cuts, scratches, and samples. I still have my smaller
V-drums kit but than I also have added another drummer, Alex who is
playing a V-drums kit for shows.
