e h t G N I K A H S . S N O I T A D N U FO Allan Sko
The next one?
I have always been fascinated with origin stories of large enterprises; how one simple occurrence can set in motion a chain of events that, years later, create something magnanimous. In the world of hip hop it doesn’t get more so than with QUAKERS; three revered producers in Fuzzface (Geoff Barrow of Portishead), KATALYST (Ashley Anderson) and 7stu7 (Stuart Matthews, Portishead’s engineer) gathering together 32 MCs for a truly international 41 track album. And it doesn’t get more simple than a chance meet 14 years ago.
“Stones Throw have signed us for a few albums, so there will be at least one more,” Ashley confirms. “We’d definitely want Diamond District on the next, we tried for them on this one, they’d chosen the beats, done the raps, but didn’t quite make deadline. A few on the first record have expressed interest in being on further productions. We’ll get cracking on that as the year progresses.”
“We met out here [in Sydney] at the end of ‘98 when Geoff was taking a break from music,” Ashley says. “Geoff hooked up with a mutual friend of mine and she put us in touch because she thought we had a bit in common and would get along. I expected him to be a bit of a rock ‘n’ roll star, an arrogant ‘I’m the man’ type of dude which is what, at that time, I expected of all famous people. But we went to Bondi and I thought ‘jeez, he’s a good guy’ and we became good friends; he came out every year for about five years every summer.”
We could have done four records, ten tracks each, but that just wasn’t the point
The friendship blossomed along with the seasons and on one fateful day, upon the undulating streets of Bristol, Geoff decided to take their relationship... Professional. “Three years ago we were sitting around his loungeroom and he said ‘I’ve got this idea’,” Ashley tells. “He’d heard a couple of beats I’d written that fitted the bill; we spent a lot of time thinking about MCs with reputations that we liked that suited the record and went about contacting them. Geoff thought it would be good to get me and Stu involved and as we were both writing some quality beats and he was less in that world than he was a few years ago, and to undertake the mammoth project we needed the energy of all three to make it work along with the other things we had going Space Invadas, Beak, Portishead...” Like all good things in life, the mantra for Quakers was simplicity itself - write some really good beats for some really good rappers. “We’ve all been fans of hip hop for years and thought it would be nice to make a little mark on that music before we became too old to be relevant,” Ashley jests. “There wasn’t some lofty charge like ‘let’s write the heaviest beats we can come up with’. The initial goal was to get 30 MCs. We ended up with 32; we could have had 40, but we had a deadline. A few people couldn’t get their shit together for whatever financial or time management reasons. Most of those people regret not being on it, but we’ve spoken to them about being on the next one.”
There are many axioms in life about a surfeit of creators; two’s company three’s a crowd, too many cooks... Did Quakers cause creative rumblings? “We all played a major role with a record of this size. We could have made four records; there’s not a beat on there that couldn’t be pushed more,” says Ashley. “We all wrote beats, got together and had ideas about little things - ‘turn the snare up on that one’, ‘try a different snare’, ‘does it need to go to that other section or can it just end there?’, stuff like that. We’d come up with the nucleus of a track, present it to each other, and if we were feeling it and it got the greenlight we’d finetune it along the way. I took charge of putting it together, a lot of the mixing was done here and a lot of referencing done in Bristol. I did the fiddly spoken word stuff over the top of all their tracks coz I kinda like doing that shit anyway.” The end result has brought joy to critics, punters, and most of all the Quakers crew themselves. “It is a pretty epic record,” Ashley agrees. “One of my reviewer friends said they were a bit disappointed at how short the tracks were. We could have made all of the songs three and a half minutes - they were all strong enough to be at least that long - but that just wasn’t the point. The point was to do something different and try and keep it moving so we didn’t get bored with it ourselves,” he laughs. “There’s been a lot of feedback. A lot of people are feeling Tone Tank’s What Chew Want. Him and Coin [Locker Kid] get mentioned the most in the press, but the public have a lot of love for Dead Prez’s track Soul Power, Fitta Happier, and War Drums with Guilty Simpson and Fat Cat. Russia With Love has been a hype track from the moment we recorded it. [Space Invadas partner] Steve Spacek was like ‘Man, that’s the tune right there’ which is when I thought we’d tapped into something special. Steve’s a hip hop fan from way back but also loves his experimental music, so people like him believe in that song. It’s a record you need to digest.” It’s wonderful to ponder - in 1998 a mutual friend introduced Geoff Barrow and Ashley Anderson, and now 14 years later we have Quakers. “Yeah, strange huh?” Ashley muses. “That’s how life works. They say everything happens for a reason; maybe Quakers was the reason.” Katalyst will be dropping past Transit Bar on Saturday May 5. Tix are a thrifty $15 inc bf and are available from Moshtix.
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