This week i interviewed Quer4mat, a name that is just about to make some noise on this blog with a special guest mixtape they came up with, exclusively for Metalectro. Quer4mat are a duo based in Germany and have been coming up with some killer mixtapes and remixes for a few months now. Most of you will probably know Quer4mat from their mixtapes or their remix on NEUS “Blast!” or Dada Life’s “Fight Club Is Closed”. I intend to ask them a few questions now that I got hold of them and shed some light on their future plans. So, let’s out find what they have in store for us in the following months…
01. Hi guys, would you mind introducing Quer4mat?
Hi, we are two crazy guys from eastern Germany. Our names are Robby and Johannes and we are both 22 years old. Our passion is music, especially the hard electronic stuff like maximal, hard electro, nu rave, dirty electro, dubstep, drumstep and also fidget house a little bit and of course metalectro. *laugh*
By the way: Quer4mat stands for the German word “Querformat” which means horizontal format in English…
02. You have been coming up with a few remixes and mixtapes, or sicktapes as you like to call them, should we expect to listen to any original tracks as well anytime soon?
Yeah… we are planning to stop our mixtape/sicktape series in September, until Christmas (Sicktape No6 will be the last one in 2011). So we hope we will have more time for producing some original Quer4mat tracks then.
03. How did you get into doing mixtapes and for how long have you been coming up with those? How did it all begin?
Oh, that’s a long story, we’ll try to keep it short. We met each other in 2005 and started making our first mixtapes on the computer. Later we used turntables (Technics 1210) and now we are using two Pioneer CDJ 400 for making our tapes the last 1,5 years. The style was something between house and commercial electro-house (shit!) at first. The project “Quer4mat” started in 2007 and from that point on we changed our style a lot. It got harder and harder and last year we reached the peak of hard electronic music in our opinion (of course schranz and hardcore is much harder but not the style we are talking about).
04. What are your influences/music backgrounds?
We’ve both started to listen to 4 by 4 beats since before we can remember. So it was only a matter of time before we begun to make our own stuff.
05. Have you ever played in a rock/metal band?
No, not really…
06. What do you think about today’s mainstream music?
Well, this is a pretty difficult question. Commercial music is dead, isn’t it? How would you define “mainstream music”? Is Skrillex commercial? There are many questions without reply. It’s a strange feeling when you’re standing in a club and all the people are singing to David “Baguettas” next chartbuster you’ve never heard before! We don’t know much about today’s mainstream music because we do not listen to ordinary radio stations or something like that.
07. You’ve been DJ-ing and playing live sets in a few clubs/parties.. Are you happy with how all that has turned out and which would be your dream live/party? How can someone book you?
There could be a little bit more bookings at the moment but generally speaking we are happy with our momentary situation. Our dream is to play with prodigies like Cyberpunkers, Skrillex, Haezer and so on…
The easiest way to book us is writing an email to: quer4mat@freenet.de
08. What are your plans for the rest of 2011?
As we said before we’ll do a break with our “Sicktape” series. Now the plan is to come up with some Quer4mat shirts (with our logo on them) and while we’re on it, we’re looking for somebody who wants to design a part of that shirt so feel free to get in touch with us about it. Producing our first original track is also in the books…
09. What are you listening to lately? Any tracks/artists you recommend?
Hack The System, Bitredux, Darth & Vader, Drivepilot, Dead C.A.T Bounce, Blaster, The S, Redial…
10. How do you like spending your free time (when not playing music)?
Volleyball, skiing, windsurfing, working, studying, Battlefield Bad Company 2 (add wc3.zanex *lol*) and mostly looking for new great artists.
11. What equipment/software are you using?
Dj Equipment: 2x CDJ 400 and DJM 600 for our tapes
Software and hardware for producing: Ableton Live 8, Akai PLD 8 and LPK 25 and a lot of VSTis
12. Would you mind giving us a heads up about this mixtape you came up with for Metalectro? What should we expect to listen to when we press play, should we expect any dead bodies and broken necks?
Definitely and don’t forget the bleeding ears!
13. What do you think about the Metalectro blog and the music featured on it?
We love it. We found a lot of bangers on the blog in the past and we’ll find a lot more in the future.
14. Something else you’d like to mention and we forgot to ask?
Yes. We want to say THANK YOU to all our supporters and friends and we want also to thank Metalectro for this interview.
You can find us here 