The Opposite of Faith

DJ Quest is a legend. For those who don’t know, Quest helped change the DJ world by being one of the second wave of highly skilled Scatching Djs (along with Qbert, Apollo, Eddie Def, Short Kut, DJ Polo G) and creating the reverse Hamster style which led to Fader controls that are now part of virtually every scratch mixer produced. Quest has worked on many projects over the past 15 years including Handsome Boy Modeling School with Prince Paul and Dan the Automator. He also helped form one of the first DJ groups-The Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters featured extensively in the documentary Scratch-and produced one of the first battle break records-ever.
Quest is also a consummate professional a cool ass guy to chill with. I hired him after the last DJ I was working with walked out in the last phase of the first Opposite of Faith project. He was gracious enough to take a break from recording his own record, Questolous, and come in to help save the project. We had actually met a long time ago when I was working with another artist. When I was calling around I ended up talking with DJ Apollo’s -assistant, the DJ Similak Chyld and she advised me to give him a call. The project itself was an unfamiliar concept-making a cohesive sound design and score using turntables. I had to find a DJ to finish up the project AND one who with willing to work with the advanced MIDI set up which required him to work in unfamiliar ways, every other voice, movement, moment and mood was created on Turntables and through Turntable mixing techniques (cutting, scratching, transforming).

…and Quest came in and just killed it.

The end result is the Karas AMV…



After that I gave him a CD of the songs I was working on and said, ‘I’d love for you to be in on this project…’

He said he’d listen and to call him in a few days.

When we linked up again he had suggestions and ideas for the songs, all of which he respectfully presented as ‘its your baby-do you mind if I add some ideas?’ The man’s understanding of music, feel, pacing and energy in a song is phenomenal. It was one of those things-I’ve lived with these songs for a while-I know how I want them to sound, so it’s kind of rare that someone makes a suggestion that goes outside the scope of how I’ve already thought of the music. That has been the most amazing thing. I think we generally have similar ears and taste but he understands the nature of working within a structure AND makes suggestion along those lines. Together I think we have come up with a sound that is very different from what’s out there and, if I can help it, will make a big impact on the independent/Trip Hop/Electronica world.

…and here is some behind the scenes footage of us working on it and one of the songs…



Til then, I have to say…this project is coming out amazing…trust me, those snippets do not do justice to how good the songs actually are…you’ll see soon. J