Let’s Go Somewhere Quiet: QtheSuit Pt 1

A closer look at the artists appearing on Let’s Go Somewhere Quiet. First up, QtheSuit, who’s appeared on Acid Ted a few times over the last couple of years. He answers some questions about himself and his music.

1. You’re from Coventry. As a Londoner, the only things I know about Coventry are that you shouldn’t be sent there and that it got bombed in the war. What else should I know about Coventry?

I’ve thought of a lot about different answers to this; many descriptions and explanations encompassing Cars to Ska, from post war architecture born from a pre-war design. From Naked Medieval ladies to Marmalade Atkins. And a journey from the Folk of Nick Drake to the birth of Ska

But the starting point to knowing Coventry, to knowing Cov, the C.O.V

Is Ghost Town by The Specials

Listen to that and you’ll start to understand it.

2. You say that QTheSuit is your dance/electro project and TheSuitCorps your live band. How do you decide which tune is for which?

That’s not an easy question

It’s more organic than that

Hmmmmm

It’s easier if I start at the beginning

The Suit was my nickname way before I started doing music again in 2005

I’d always been aiming at combining beats with guitars and strings

In 2008, I played the Big Chill for the first time with the 8 piece live band I’d put together for the occasion. We took my solo tunes and turned them into a full live set up. That was the sole aim of the live band and why I put it together.

But people started to get confused thinking the Live Band was The Suit, and it wasn’t, but the Live band was getting a life of its own, so I made the decison in 2009 to rename the live band The Suit Corps just after I’d been Band of the Month on BBC Introducing. However, I still wrote tunes that would never get into the set, tunes that I wrote just for me, and the remane meant I could still do these without any further confusion.

Like The Ghost of Loyalty Lost (working beat) for example:

So all of my tracks start as The Suit Tracks and I then decide if they were to go into the live set, at which point they turn into something else

Q, my partner in crime on QtheSuit, was helping me master the Suit Corps tracks – he’d then remixed two of them and after some healthy praise from Acid Ted QtheSuit was born.

To finally answer your question, or attempt to anyway, firstly tracks can be both – two sides of the same coin

Eninnio-3 was the live band version that got praised by the Independent [a national newspaper] last summer

Dubennio-3 is the QTheSuit version

They are the same song

However, QtheSuit is something different. Either me or Q put forward a half-finished track and then tag team it until virtually finished. V6 was the first track we worked on like this and then this became a Suit Corps live track as well.

In The Suit Corps I write 80% of the Music, in QtheSuit I write 50%

At some point next summer my aim is to take the essence of the live band and merge it with QtheSuit encompassing aspects of other collaborations e.g. The Suit Corps vs Le Baron de Pezilla – Repas Avec Le Baron

To create a live experience that truly pushes past the limitations of Live EDM or the standard guitar bass drums band format.

[to be continued]

~ by acidted on June 7, 2012.