Interview #584: The Qemists

Starting out life as a rock band by day and drum and bass DJs by night, it wasn't until The Qemists combined their two loves that the sparks really began to fly. Signed to the highly respected Ninja Tunes label, the band can now boast two albums of guitar-heavy d n b featuring a host of big name collaborators, from grimelord Wiley and beatboxer Beardyman to rock god Mike Patton and metalkids Enter Shikari.

I Like Music spoke with Leon, Liam and Dan about their early days, translating their music to the live arena, collaborations, and the tools of their trade.

"I Like Music because…it’s how I express myself.” The Qemists

ILM: How did you first start making music?

Leon: A lot of our contemporaries got into drinking or taking drugs, but we were quite lucky and found music instead. We ended up rehearsing every day after school. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but we would just play whatever we liked and start recording it, at first on tape, then on little four tracks and then on computers. It just got more and more technical until we got a studio, and it’s grown organically from there.

ILM: Have you always been in the same Brighton studio?

Dan: No, we’ve moved around a lot. We’ve probably been in six or seven places. Maybe more. We moved again last month! We’re always just eyeing up different rooms, trying to assess the acoustics of them and all sorts of other things. Sunlight is a big one; if you’ve got a room with sunlight you’re laughing!

ILM: Who were some of your biggest musical influences when you were starting out?

Leon: Bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains. That kind of thing became hugely important to us. By the time we were sixteen we were sneaking into clubs, and because of the heavy music we’d been listening to, drum and bass seemed like the obvious choice. We started getting into stuff like Roni Size, Adam F, Grooverider, Rush & Optical. We’re talking some time ago now! Then eventually we glued the two together.

ILM: Can you remember the first gig that you played together?

Dan: The first place we played was in the bar of Concorde 2, which is a big club on the seafront at Brighton. All the big guys would be DJing and we’d take over the bar for the night and do four or five hour sets.

Leon: We’d bring laptops down cos there was stuff we’d made in the studio that we wanted to play. We’re talking about eight years ago here, and people would walk by, see the laptop by the decks and say “what are you going to do with that?” We’d tell them we were going to play music off it and they’d be like “how’d you do that?” Now everyone’s doing it of course, and we’ve stopped. We’ve gone back to the old school! But yeah, we moved from the bar into room 1 and got some support slots there. That’s how our Qemists Sound System started to evolve.

ILM: What’s the live set-up like now?

Leon: The live show is what we’re working on 24/7 at the moment. It’s slightly more complicated than The Qemists Sound System, which is essentially just the three of us DJing. For the live show we try to mix it 50-50 live and DJing, so that we can get the best of both worlds. I play the drums, Liam plays the guitars and we have three vocalists and all sorts of technology. We’re plugged into Dan’s work-station so that he can control the sound of the drums and guitar from centre stage. All that goes out to the lighting guy, who makes it look really cool! We just try and keep the energy really high, like we do on the album. It’s high-energy and rocky.

ILM: What have been some of your most memorable live moments?

Liam: Last year’s Reading and Leeds was great. We’d never played that festival before and certainly didn’t anticipate so many people turning up. Our set clashed with quite a lot of other big names but we still managed to pack out the tent. Plus we played well. It was received well and it sounded good. It was just one of those gigs where our expectations weren’t overly high, and we ended up having a wicked time. Those kinds of gigs are often the best. Also, Japan is worth a mention. Summer Sonic last year. That’s inside at Tokyo Arena, which is mental!

Leon: We weren’t really expecting a crowd that big, but before our gig people just kept on coming in until it was full to the back. The people just looked like beans on toast!

Dan: It was the first time I’ve ever heard anyone sing back the lyrics.

ILM: How do you guys go about writing new music in the studio?

Dan: We’ve never really had any set way of making tunes. It’s always been an organic process. It could be any one of us starting any part of an idea and it’ll get thrown around between us and get worked on until we accept it as a real thing that we’re going to finish.

Leon: Sometimes I’ll put down a drum part or Liam will put down a guitar part and it’ll start from that. Other times we’ve got a tune that’s entirely electronic up until the point we say “that needs live drums,” or whatever it may be. We have no set starting point. It’s more about the finishing point really; about looking back at the track and being critical between all of us. We all have different influences and are looking for different things, so once all of us are happy with a track then most other people will take something from it.

ILM: Do you have lots of unfinished tunes, or do you finish everything you start?

Dan: I’m not sure about ‘unfinished tunes’. It’s more ideas that we’ve started. That’s how I prefer to think about it!

Liam: They’re normally either sketches or they’re finished tunes. There isn’t really anything in-between that.

Leon: Yeah, once we’ve decided to finish something we do whatever it takes, even if we have to replace every part of it so that there’s nothing left of the original.

ILM: How do you push yourselves to evolve musically?

Dan: It comes quite naturally to a certain extent. We all listen to a lot of music, so as long as you’re constantly doing that you’re bound to want to try new ideas. We all like to try new things, so it’s always being pushed forward.

Leon: We’re quite lucky being in Brighton, because most good music comes to you here. Everything from the new trendy stuff right through to old school heroes. They all come through Brighton eventually, so it’s quite easy for us to be influenced by lots of different stuff here.

ILM: What’s exciting you at the moment?

Leon: We’ve got a bit of a love-hate relationship with dubstep at the moment! There’s some amazing stuff coming out, but at the same time there are thousands of people trying to jump on the bandwagon. You’ve got to be quite critical with anything new and trendy. We’ve always liked listening to dub and dub-influenced music. Things like King Tubby and Dub Professor. So it’s quite a breath of fresh air that lots of people are listening to stuff made at that tempo. There’s also a lot of good pop music being made at the moment; people pushing things with studio production but still coming out sounding like a good live act. We’re really enjoying The Dead Weather, and even Kings Of Leon’s new stuff has great-sounding production.

ILM: You've collaborated with a number of different artists, which have been some of the most inspiring?

Liam: There have been lots of different people throughout our career, but one of the most recent and possibly most interesting ones was Enter Shikari. It’s the first time we’ve collaborated with a band, and it was the first time they’d done something like this as well. We had no idea what the end result was going to be. That was exciting. Anything was possible. Working with Mike Patton from Faith No More was also great, but in a different way.

Leon: Working with any rock band or well-known figure, you have this idea that they don’t really work very hard, but you actually find out that they’re the most hard-working, professional and thoughtful people. That’s why they’ve got to where they have. That’s certainly true of Mike Patton, who had a huge amount of knowledge about studio-work and song-writing. The same goes for Wiley, Enter Shikari, The Automatic…

Liam: I don’t think we’ve done a collaboration that we’ve felt was unsuccessful or without having learnt valuable lessons from it.

Leon: We wouldn’t do it. If we started working with someone and they were unprofessional or untalented then it just wouldn’t go very far.

ILM: Have you got any new collaborations lined up that you can reveal to us?

Leon: Well as a matter of fact… hmm...I don’t know if we’re ready to say yet! We’ve been inviting a lot of people into our studio recently, and we’ve been invited into a few other people’s studios. You’ll have to watch this space! We’re really loving the collaboration thing at the moment. It’s not that we’re devoid of ideas ourselves, it’s just that it keeps things really fresh and fun.

Dan: In the past all of our collaborations have been with either bands or vocalists, but we’ve been doing a lot more collaborations with other producers recently. It’s amazing what you can learn in one day working with another person. Even if you’ve been producing for ten years, other people will have a slightly different way of doing the same stuff as you.

ILM: When will we get to hear the results of these new collaborations?

Leon: We’re constantly leaking our new stuff. We’ve been writing quite a lot and we don’t want to save it all up for an album.

Liam: There’ll be something new out soon…

ILM: What hardware/software do you use to make your music?

Leon: We’ve got two identical set-ups in out studio, which is how we can work between three people; transferring songs from one to the other. They’re software-based set-ups on PCs centring on Cubase. Each PC has a PowerCore FireWire device for extra processing power and plug-ins, and we also have a Focusrite Liquid Mix, which is great for compression and EQ. We use that on every track. Then we have a Focusrite pre-amp - the ISA440 mk 2 – which we pair with a Neumann microphone; those two go really well together.

Liam: We’ve also used a Digidesign Avid 11 Rack, which is a digital guitar amp. They’ve just brought that out and they’ve really nailed it. That’s a great new thing they’ve discovered. We’re also using a MacBook Pro for the first time at the moment. They’re really fast and it really makes a difference. If you get a good computer, good soundcard and good speakers you’re basically set.

ILM: What other advice would you give to someone just starting out in the music industry?

Leon: Do your own thing, otherwise you won’t get noticed. Feel free to take influence from wherever you want, but don’t just try and be like your favourite artists because they’ve already done it. Often people just try and make the music that’s trendiest at that moment and that’s not the way forward. If you’re going to do that, you have to work out what you can bring to the music, not the other way around.

Liam: It’s a great way to start learning, but once you’ve learnt the chords to your favourite songs and you have those skills it’s time to start putting the chords together in a different order.

ILM: What have you guys been listening to lately?

Leon: The Dead Weather have a really cool way of mixing different sounds – synths and guitars – but still giving it this bluesy vibes. I’ve been loving that. Enter Shikari do it in a different way as well. Their live gig is full of dance and dubstep and synth, but then they’re obviously a real metal band. That’s hugely influential to us, and that’s why we like working with them.

ILM: What’s next up for The Qemists?

Leon: We’re going to be playing lots of live dates all around the world. We’re talking to people in America a lot and they’re liking the rocky aspect of our sound. That’d be a great place to go; we’ve never been there. We’re going to continue DJing and making albums as well. There seems to be a lot of new material being written already, so I think you can expect a third Qemists album too.

ILM: Do you know what you’re doing for New Year’s Eve yet?

Liam: We never do! I don’t think any DJ does at this time of year!

Guest Edit #5: The Qemists Take a look here