Interview with Daz Quayle - 11th Hour Technology

Another unsung hero of the UK's electronic music scene, Daz Quayle is an electro and techno DJ and producer of strong repute. Established over the past ten years through international releases on labels such as Germanys Klang Electronic, and the famous Emissions Audio Output, as well as international DJ sets, Daz has quietly been going from strength to strength.

Recording both individually, and with production partner Carl Finlow, he has released under the names of 'Black Labs', 'Holloway Squad', 'Il-ek-tro', 'Scareletron' and more. He was also jointly responsible for setting up the Haywire club nights, with fellow Leeds resident Amanda Burton.

More recently, he has set up his own label, SCSI-AV, putting out electro and experimental material from himself and Carl, as well as new talented artists.

Daz Quayle When I was about seven I got into the early hip-hop - really heavily into breakdancing, I used to go to all the competitions and such. But at the time there wasn't really anyone else doing it, just me and a few mates. When Sugerhill Gang came out in '79, that was the first sort of electronic music that really hit me. Obviously all the Kraftwerk stuff came to me a couple of years after that, and then - Planet Rock. I just heard that, and that was it.

Daz Quayle Yeah, I got some decks when I was about 13 or something - I just bought a couple of belt drive decks off some guy, and set them up in the garage at home. A few of us would get our tunes, get together, and that was it really. I started saving for some Technics, started buying more records. But all my early hip-hop and stuff was bought in local supermarkets! All the electro compilation albums, Ice-T and Chris Taylor, Tommy Boy - stuff like that.

Daz Quayle I think when I got to about 15 I started looking more or less old enough to try and blag it into clubs, and I started going down to a basement place, called Gallery at the time. That was like early techno - Detroit stuff, Transmat stuff… it was a sort of mish-mash really, all sorts of music. From then I started getting really into techno, and it was that point that I met up with Carl [Finlow]. He was working down there, behind the bar, and I got to know him through some other guys there, and we started writing stuff together.

Daz Quayle The first release was the Trope thing. It took us quite a long time to decide what we were comfortable with. Carl had not really heard that much electro at all - I had been into electro and wanted to do it but at that point had not written any music, and found it quite hard to get my points across to him. It was a good learning curve for both of us I think, because Carl was teaching me how to use the equipment, and I was bringing in records and tapes, influencing him musically. It was just a natural progression really - as we worked together more, it started getting more electro-y, and the techno side of it faded out after a while. I'd always wanted to write electro because I thought it had a much better shelf life, and I'm just totally interested and obsessed by sound. I'm more interested in individual sounds really than tracks - obviously I like a track to sound finished, but if a it's got a really good sound in it, it just totally turns me on.

Daz Quayle Yeah, Andrew [Weatherall] used to come up and play at Basics and places like that, and he came around and heard a couple of things, and said he was interested in putting them out, so it just went on from there. The Electron Industries thing came just after that - that's when me and Carl decided to do the Scalatron stuff. We'd got some stuff on Electron and were really into it - and we just got straight on with that - sent some tracks up and got them put out.

Daz Quayle Haywire had been on and off in Leeds for a while - it was basically Amanda [Burton] and Fraser, a couple of friends I knew who had a web design company, and through that we all decided to start doing a night, because there was nothing in Leeds at the time. Andrew was coming up and playing a lot of the gigs, and we had a couple of different venues in Leeds, and then we got a good venue in Coventry, and we didn't have to lay out any money! That gave us the opportunity to get bigger guests, better nights. That finished after about a year, and we brought it back to Leeds, and just did some small weekly things.

Daz Quayle Carl had done some more housey music with Klang, and they wanted to hear some of the more electro stuff, so he sent a CD over with a load of his electro on, and stuff we'd done together. They chose one side with just Carl, and the other with me and Carl - and that went down really well, so we did a second one for them. That's really the point where I started wanting to do my own label [SCSI-AV], just simply because it was taking quite a long time for things to happen with labels and releases. Also, I wanted to give people the freedom with artwork - Carl's always been really keen on doing his own artwork, and we wanted to do a whole audio-visual thing. We thought that artwork was pretty relevant to what we actually doing, trying to get things to look as they were sounding.

Daz Quayle It's a good one that! Obviously there's a sort of Sci-Fi element, but I'm the worlds worst person for watching films and stuff, unless I know it's going to be really good. I just sit there for half and hour, and then I'm off! If I'm not listening to music, then I do watch some TV, very irregularly, but that's it really…

Daz Quayle No, not at all. Just the way I've been brought up, I'm totally na�ve to all that stuff. Since I was seven, I've just been onto music, and that's it. A few records hit me so fucking hard that I just I can't look at anything else. It is an obsession, and I really sort of resent being pulled away from it a lot of the time. That's the thing about watching films - I think, I'm sitting here and not doing anything. I get so itchy if something's not got my total attention, then I just want to write some music or something, because I don't get as much time as I'd like to. Time is just so precious, and because I'm working as well, by the time I get in all I want to do is get ideas down - which is a bit of a nightmare 'cause I never seem to get anything finished. I've got 3 CDs with just ideas, but nothing complete - I'll come back to a track the next day on a totally different vibe and start something different!

11th-hour So what plans do you have for the future of SCSI and other projects?

Daz Quayle There will be more labels, but I've just got to get the production side of things running more smoothly in this country. Now the distribution side of things is sorted out, I've just got to find somewhere that can do the manufacturing, properly! I've had so many problems in the last year of production, but it's getting sorted out. Once SCSI's more constantly running, I've got a couple of projects I'll be starting with other people. Just different labels, trying out different things - I don't want to be stuck doing one sort of thing, and I do try to keep the label quite varied so people don't know what they'll be hearing when they get the next release - hopefully they'll be quite interested to find out what it's going to be like.

Daz Quayle No, no. I've not been concentrating at all on the DJing. I haven't had my decks turned on for about a year - I've just got so many ideas for making music. Also 'cause I've got the decks in the same room as the computer, I'll listen to a couple of records, and then whatever I want to hear that I haven't got, I'll try to write it down! The labels taking up so much of my time, trying to get it organized, and I've not really had time to write stuff. Klang are still waiting for another release from us - I'd like to do some more stuff with Carl for it, but we'll see what kind of time we've got. But I've just realized I need to get some more stuff out before I start DJing more. And it just takes up so much time doing a gig. It's nicely paid, but it's a lot of time out, especially if you're going abroad. All my weekend's gone, and I could of done a couple of tracks. I prefer to just write stuff now, and the DJ part will come later.

Daz Quayle Terrible. Absolutely fucking terrible. It's such a shame, because there are so many small groups of people who are doing really good stuff. All over the country, from Scotland down to London there's people doing good work and getting music out there. I just find the British music press as a whole, especially magazines, are stopping things getting any bigger. There's not really anybody in the country who's willing to stick their neck out and push it.

Daz Quayle Yeah - I just think people aren't willing to take a risk, and people that could probably would change many things. But they won't do it, because they're already on such a good deal by doing much safer stuff. All British labels do better abroad than they do in England, and a lot of people I speak to who have got really good labels in other countries aren't dealing with England - it's just pointless, there not selling anything over here. I think that there are a few really good select shops, and that's it - just a few. These shops can't be selling all the music, you know? The mail order thing seems to be picking up, and a lot of people are just getting music that way, from abroad, but I just hope the shops stay, because there's nothing quite like going into one. But if it gets the music out there, then that's all that matters, because there's a lot of good quality stuff that needs to be selling a lot more than it actually is.

Daz Quayle I don't know - it was quite mad 'cause I was at a mates and we heard Pete Tong play Adult. on Radio One!! So we just ended up getting more pissed after that!! But I don't know - you have the Kraftwerk Expo 2000 getting into the fucking charts, and you just think when that happens: this is all it takes for something like this to go crazy! But I'm not sure if it would spoil it - everyone's sales may go up, but just not to the right people. That's one fortunate thing about not selling many records, you know that the ones buying them appreciate them. Not just buying them because someone told them to buy 'em, or some magazine has said 'Get This'! All it takes is for one of these people to say that, and that's it. There's no way anyone can say how it's going to go, because it just relies on so many things. Just something like Kraftwerk getting another hit, and suddenly everyone's into electro!

Techno's definitely becoming more widespread again, but the quality ends up dropping. You'll get distributors taking 100 records out to a shop, with one really wicked track in there. By the time they've got to the fiftieth record, they get tired of hearing the same stuff. That was a problem we were having, going through a techno distributor with electro. People didn't want to order techno who would have ordered SCSI stuff, and didn't get to hear it, cause with all the techno labels, SCSI was just another one…I think it's good that we moved [to Baked Goods], because the rest of the labels that are there are more varied, and going out to people who seemed to have a better ear.

Daz Quayle Germany. Germany, definitely. Before, the exports in Germany were about 85% of our sales. I don't yet know what the situation is with the distributors now, but I know we'll be selling a lot more in England now than with the last guys. It's quite hard though, cause you play more than an hour of electro in England and people are fucking bored! They just want to hear something a bit more 4/4, a bit more banging. When I've played full electro sets in Europe, you can get three hours electro and it's fine - people will stay on the dancefloor. It's just a shame you can't do that in England - you've got an odd few clubs that pull it off from time to time, but I think people are definitely more into house or techno here. Most people who like electro like techno, but a lot of people who like techno don't like electro! It's quite strange because electro's older than techno, and techno kind of formed itself out of that. It seems to be turning back 'round again now, but it will just take some time for people to get into it again.

I think people like Dopplereffekt and Drexciya have done so much good, because Drexciya crossed techno back over into electro, and then Dopplereffekt was just about the most pure electro I've ever heard. I just wish they'd put out more records!

Daz Quayle Totally, totally. The next few releases, because of production problems, have taken frustratingly ages to come out, but they still sound really fresh to me. That makes me quite confident, as I get bored of things so quickly. My personal choice of music varies month to month, and I am pretty extreme with it too. Once the sites up properly, I'm quite excited by it all. Like I said, there's not a free minute in the day when I'm not thinking about what we're going to be doing. There's been so much stuff by people I know that has passed and not been put, and it's just criminal! Especially with the shit people are selling nowadays! The reason that I set up SCSI was to give artists the opportunity to get things out quicker, and give them a chance to do their own artwork, so to give people more of a feel for the artist themselves. The whole image of the people behind the music - I want that to stick out…