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A True Sacrifice

A lot of people say they suffer for their art, but watching Quentin Harris’ face writhing in agony as he undergoes the latest in a succession of elaborate tattoos leaves you with the impression it’s truer in some cases than others. The word ‘Sacrifice’  - the name of his sophomore artist album – emblazoned across his ribcage shows just how much Quentin lives and breathes house music and just how far he’s prepared to go to make a statement. We caught up with him to talk collaborations, imagery and that oh-so painful addiction to ink…

What is on your mind right now?

On my mind right at the moment is food! Ha! I got in a little late last night and I had a little too much alcohol and now I need to absorb it. I’m going to Tenaglia’s party tonights so I need to have all the absorption I can get!

Tell us about your tattoo’s…

My tattoos are my ulta-ego’s – that’s how I consider them. One of my first, is of an angel with horns (symbolizing the best of both worlds) and the angel is naked - it symbolizes my sexual side. He (the angel) is also carrying a 45 Spindle, and for those of you who don’t know what that is, it is the thing that is used to play 45’s on a record player. Also on my arm, I have a tattoo of Poseidon ‘The God of Water’. I love water and I love swimming, and he’s sitting on a rock.  Tattoo’s are very addictive, once you have one you want more! I’ve decided to get a tattoo done for every country that I visit. The first country I visited was England so in London I went to a tattoo parlour and had a star done with a ‘D’ in it. When I got back to New York I had it filled in a bit more. That’s about it for now until I get more tattoo’s done!

What are your thoughts on the House music scene at the moment? Do you think it’s in good shape?

I think it’s in good and bad shape. The good thing about it is that people are now starting to stop pigeon-holing music with genres all the time. Things just merge and you can’t just sub-genre it and micro-manage it into these little particles. The bad thing about house music right now is that I don’t think DJ’s are really taking any risks when they play. They seem to stick with one kind of sound and the records that they play are very similar to each other. I’m not hearing DJ’s play a record that, let’s say, is from 1977 and then playing a record that was made today right after it. It’s not because they don’t have the capability to do that, it’s because they haven’t had that kind of exposure in life and the exposure of hearing DJ’s play like that. I, fortunately, have and when I went out I’d hear a DJ play a Talking Head’s record followed by a house record and hear it being mixed together. That’s the bad thing about house music and it drives me crazy – there’s not enough DJ’s mixing it up. There’s lots of great music out there and just because it doesn’t fit in your little box doesn’t mean that it won’t fit into your set. DJ-ing is like programming – you’re the puppet master and you should dictate to them about what they do.

Quentin Harris

There’s a big skill required in order to that...

Yeah totally. Taking Crystal Waters and mixing it with Dennis Ferrer’s ‘Hey Hey’ is a perfect example of taking two great songs, seeing what they would sound like together and taking that risk. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but at least I take the risk.

Is there too much or not enough good music out there for you at the moment?

I think there’s too much music out there right now and I think that makes it hard to find the really good music within that abundance of music. I think that when there’s too much stuff given to you at one time you don’t know how to deal with it. I’ll give you some examples of that – Before there were online record stores such as iTunes, I would go to a normal record store and sometimes the person in the store would give me like a hundred records! They knew me in the store and I was always confused why they did that.
All I wanted was the stuff I instantly liked and what I thought was hot. So quite a few times I’d come home and put on a record that I bought and didn’t like it. With the iPod generation I think to myself: ‘Does someone really need space for 10,000 songs? Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have my entire collection at my disposal, but ultimately I feel that that would make me lose my focus. For me it’s better to have a smaller amount of records at my disposal because then I know that the ones I’ve picked will work better in a club as opposed to having an abundance of records and getting confused and not knowing where to go with them. Less is more!

Tell us about the album you’ve been working on...

It’s called ‘Sacrifice’ and it took 2 and a half years to make, and I had to make many sacrifices whilst making the album and that’s one of the reasons why it’s entitled like that.If you’ve seen the teaser video I made, the reason it sees me tattooing myself is in order to portray me sacrificing myself for my art – not everyone would get a tattoo put on their body like that, and for me it’s a form of art and it’s an expression.

I worked with a lot of great artists on this album, some that you’ll know and some that are new. I’m all about discovering new talent and cultivating it, and as I always say in my interviews – I’m very ‘Pro-Artist’ & ‘Pro-Album’. I shouldn’t have more accolades than Ultra (Nate) or visa-versa, because it benefits everybody. I worked with Ultra Nate on the album and the first single was done with her called ‘Do The Right Thing’, that’s out now so go and get it! I also worked with a couple of new artists - I did a spoken-word track called ‘Paradise’ with an artist called Koffee, and that was really interesting because I’d never done a spoken-word record before. I also worked with Georgia Cee, Jason Walker and Drew Vision who’s a really great male vocalist. I’m very ‘pro-male vocalists’, I think us male vocalists don’t get a fair shake and the reason that is, is because female vocalists, statistically, sell more because you can put them in a dress, you can put make-up on them, you can dye their hair and you can put them in big costumes and you can’t do those things with the males. What you see is what you get with us, and it’s our talent.

Did you write and produce the record yourself?

Yes, along with the other writers which were the other vocalists I worked with. If I could describe the record, it sounds like myself, Oscar G & Ralph Falcon and Prince went into the studio and made a record. I think this album is what that would sound like, in my head. I did a 20-piece string arrangement on the songs, and you can hear it on the teaser video – Those are real strings people! I really like merging real instruments with electronic music. I play instruments and I like to showcase that. In terms of the lyrical content I wrote that with the other vocalists, so I share the writing credits with them for that. I like the collaborative effort. I think it’s a great thing.This time around I feel like it was more about going into the studio and collaborating with the artists as opposed to my first album where it was more a case of sending out tracks to them and seeing if they could do anything with them or not. This time I worked with them in the studio and we came up with the concepts there.

Tell us about the tracks on the album which are the most personal to you.

All of the tracks on the album are extremely personal, but there are a few that stick out more than others. When I was working on this album I was going through a really tough period in my life – creatively. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do musically. I’d had some success and I had people saying to me ‘Ooh Quentin you have this type of sound’ and for me I couldn’t comprehend what they really meant. I got frustrated and when I would go to the studio nothing would come out and I felt that I was making the same record over and over again and I just shut down. I got writer’s block. It’s funny, but out of all the songs that sparked my creativity on this album, it was the instrumental called ‘Silence’ which I’d written 3 years ago! It’s always the tracks that you find less exciting that other people will say are exciting, and that track just sparked the creativity and got my juices flowing again.

There’s two songs on the record that are the most personal to me. One’s called ‘Why Me?’ which I did with Cordell. The chorus on ‘Why Me?’ goes ‘Put your trust in me, I got what you need, there ain’t no need to say why me?’  and the song starts with me being really miserable and in a bad mental state and basically I’m saying ‘Why me? Why is this happening to me?’ so that’s why it’s a personal song. The other personal song is ‘Home’ by Jason Walker. It’s a song I can really identify with. He and I travel all over the world and a lot of the time I’m by myself and it gets lonely and sometimes all I want is to be at home. So those are the two most personal songs on the album. I’m an emotional guy and everything I do is emotionally driven. I’m not a robot.

Jason Walker

Who creates the imagery for your albums?

The imagery for this album is very ‘in your face’. I was on my way to Greece and I had to get a connecting flight from Paris. I had a little bit of time in between the flights so I went to the magazine shop and had a look at this fashion magazine. Inside it was this picture of a guy who was in this pristine and beautiful white suit but he wasn’t wearing any shoes and his hair was quite ratty (like a rat’s nest) and all you could see were hands holding his body up and there was fire around him. You couldn’t see who’s hands they were and that was when I came up with the name, ‘Sacrifice’, for the album. Originally the album was going to be called ‘Politically Correct’, but this picture made the guy look like he was being thrown into a pit of fire as if he were being sacrificed. It just clicked in my head, and so that’s where I got the name for the album.

So when it came to the imagery for ‘Sacrifice’ I started to think of crazy and twisted things like picturing myself dressed as a native person with my head on a spear! Ha! I thought about all this crazy stuff and I eventually decided to get the word ‘Sacrifice’ tattooed on my body and use that as the artwork. I ran this idea past Karl Giant, who does all the wonderful imagery you see, and he said ‘Yeah that’s great!!’ And that’s what we did. I talked to my tattoo artist and he let us film there too. It was really interesting because Ultra Nate was also there whilst I was being tattooed. It was a really different experience because I’d never been photographed whilst having something like that done.

As far as art goes, I really like to push the envelope. It’s like Lady Gaga. I saw her two years ago and at the time I didn’t know who she was, and she was just walking down the street dressed as a disco ball. Sometimes you have to do things which are ‘in your face’ just to get people’s attention and for them to listen to your message. It would be different if you didn’t have the talent to back up all the imagery, and so when it’s all taken away you have to have the substance there, like she does of course. It’s good to give people what they’re not expecting, as Grace Jones once told me!

Where will you be playing in Ibiza this year?

I’ll be playing at the Strictly Defected Saturday night parties, and I believe ill be playing at some of them in July and August. It will be great fun for you to see my crazy DJ-ing antics! If you missed me in Miami this year, make sure you check me out in Ibiza this summer – you’ll get to hear me for a little bit longer and you’ll really get to see what I’m about musically. And when you get there, just dance! Dance, dance, dance! You can look at me from time to time but I want to see you dance!

I’m a very accomplished cook! I love to cook, and when my friends come to town from all over the world I like to cook for them. So if you guys come and visit me ill make you some food! If I wasn’t a DJ/Musician I would be a chef!

Sacrifice is out 24th May on Strictly Rhythm - click to listen & pre-order