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Features
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Get Credible with Simon Qudos
Reported by Greg Lynn
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Submitted 18-02-08 15:28
So you haven’t heard of DJ Simon Qudos yet? Well shame on you! After spending the past couple of years building up the firm foundations for his musical career, 2008 looks like it could be a very promising year for the 31 year old spinner from Surrey.
Whilst being a regular clubber, at the end of 2005, Simon decided that he wanted to be on the other side of the decks. After first buying a pair of Numark decks and then later upgrading to Technics, he spent the whole of 2006 grafting away, mastering the craft. He developed a mixing style that was absolutely seamless and beat matching that was pin-point accurate. His determination eventually paid off and it wasn’t long before Simon was playing out both up in Scotland and back down South. He even made it on to the international circuit, entertaining the crowds in Sydney, Australia. You can always be assured that whatever set Simon plays, it will match the mood and the vibe on the dance floor perfectly, keeping the crowd stomping throughout. You won’t see him sticking to one narrow style either, as you can expect to hear him play everything from trance, hard trance through to hard dance and electro house.
But not content with just conquering the wheels of steel, he’s also delved into the world of production, racking up a selection of six releases already, including ‘Velocity’, ‘To the Stars’, and ‘Forever Restless’ — the latter claiming critical acclaim in the media. Bearing that in mind, we thought we’d sit down and find out what makes Simon Qudos tick...
Simon, you actually started DJ’ing and producing a little later than most; do you feel though that this gave you an advantage over your peers, as you had that added experience and maturity?
I think if anything, starting so late on makes it harder when you are starting out. It’s very hard these days to break into the dance scene and with so much talent out there already it makes it even more competitive.
Many of today’s new DJs are often already established producers — I really wish I had have concentrated more on those music lessons at school now lol! However, despite starting late on, I am glad that I have started, and I have no plans to stop now…
Through out 2006 you put a lot of practice in to mastering the art of mixing; how many hours of dedication were you giving it a day? And did picking it up come quite naturally to you?
I wish it had have come a lot easier than it did There was a stage when I really thought that I would never beat match! I wasn’t really sure what I was doing when I first started, and didn’t get any direction for several months, so I was pretty much going it alone.
In April 2006, I ruptured my Achilles tendon whilst exercising and that caused me to have six months off work. I soon got bored of Big Brother and other daytime TV shows, and instead just practiced mixing almost solidly for 6 to 8 hours a day most days. I’m sure the neighbours must have hated me!
After a couple of months, I started to feel much happier with the way my mixes were sounding and took the step of posting them on harderfaster.net. I was extremely lucky to receive some good constructive criticism from Dave Mac, K8e and Nomi Sunrider and used their advice in subsequent practice sessions…. After 6 months, my mixing was 100 times better than it had been when I posted that first mix and it wasn’t long before I secured my first gig.
Your genres of choice are trance, hard trance, hard dance and a bit of electro House thrown in for good measure; what drew you to each genre in the first place?
Well, I’ve always been a hard house fan, going back to the early to mid-90s. When I got back into clubbing I saw Lisa Lashes at the Syndicate in Blackpool and that reminded me of how much I liked the music. As I started to listen to more dance music, I was drawn to hard trance and dance, tech trance and eventually to electro.
I like the faster paced genres but found myself getting into the sounds of electro through my house mate, Andy Collings (DJ Phil C) who is an electro DJ. He runs a promotion called Get FunKT and offered me sets. After several nights I became one of the residents. I’m quite particular about the kind of electro that I like — and it tends to be the faster more banging style!
Your most memorable gig so far is when you played your first set of 2007 in Sydney. What made that gig stand out as being your favourite?
I’ve now played out in Australia twice, and had a great time with both of sets. However, if I had to choose, then the last gig I played over there would now rate as my favourite and that was for Ignite last September.
The Sorted Sundayze gig came about after a google search; I was going out to Australia on holiday anyway, and started to look around on the net to see if I could get in contact with any promoters in Sydney as I thought it would be really cool to be able to DJ whilst there. Through my search I got in contact with Sorted Sundayze as they were looking for DJs for their night, and so on the day that I landed, I took my demo CD to them and a couple of weeks later, I was booked to play a set on New Years Day.
I happened to be going back to Australia in September 2007, and so a couple of months beforehand, I got in contact with the promoters of Ignite (Ali and Daryl) who subsequently booked me for a two-hour headline set on 29 September. The set up at the club (Tailors) was good and the sound was spot on — although it was not as busy as I would have liked, I managed to still get people on the dance floor and had some good feedback about my set from the promoters and clubbers.
For me, a gig in Sydney will always be special because I have spent a fair bit of time there over the last few years. The Ignite promotion was a great night and kudos to Ali and Daryl for both their enthusiasm and for putting on such a wicked night. I had a great time there and met some really cool people along the way.
One of the first tracks you produced was ‘Velocity’. Can you describe what work you put in to that production to make it a really danceable number?
This was my first tune, and the first time in the studio so everything was new to me. I took with me some ideas of what I wanted, and some of my favourite tunes. From there Olly Perris helped to realise these ideas and ‘Velocity’ was created. It subsequently charted well, and I received some good feedback so for a first tune, I was really pleased — and then keen to get back into the studio asap!
It was the release of this tune that led to Dan-Identikal and I getting in contact which then led to us working on the remix of ‘System Shock’ with MDA & Spherical — a tune that has received real positive praise, and has now been signed to Tidy Digital with an imminent release date.
Another one of your production efforts ‘Right Where We Are’ has just been released. With over 200 dance singles being released every week, what did you do to make that one stand out?
When this tune was first finished it didn’t have the vocals. I sent it over to Carl Nicholson and Dan-Identikal of Presence Recordings and it was Carl that suggested that it would benefit from a vocal to make it stand out more — so that a clubber would listen to it during the night and when they come away from the night, they would still be able to remember the tune because of the vocal.
I took Carl’s advice onboard, and Dan put me in contact with Stace and she came up with the vocal for the tune. This tune is being released as part of an EP with another of my tunes called ‘Adrenochrome’. The EP should be released on Presence in early February, and I’m looking forward to seeing how well received it is.
On your track ‘Too The Stars’, you worked with the well known engineer and producer K-Complex (also part of the Nu-Energy Collective). How did you and Peter develop a good working relationship together?
Pete was recommended to me, and obviously as he is so well established within the scene, it was great to be able to have the chance to work with him on a new tune. I’m still very much in the learning stages when it comes to production, and Pete was good at explaining the various things that he was doing as we went along.
As I had done before, I took along some ideas and samples that I liked and then Pete made suggestions as to how they could be used and whether they would be suitable for the kind of tune that I was looking to create. I also took along other tunes of my own, as I was keen for the new tune to be of a similar sound.
The end result is something that I am really pleased with, and also featured on Pete’s Hard Dance Winter 2007 mix, which is available to download from his website. The tune has not been released yet, but I am hoping for it to be signed and released at some point this year.
Your production ‘Forever Restless’ has now been released on the digital label ‘Addiction Digital’; what type of praise did that get when it first came out?
I was really pleased and surprised when I was surfing HarderFaster and found that ‘Forever Restless’ had been reviewed by Steve Milton. The review was excellent and very favourable, so I was made up. It was the first time that one of my tunes had been reviewed so it was good to see that it done so well. As a result of ‘Forever Restless’ being released, I have made some new contacts and hope that these will lead to some collaborations in the near future.
These days in clubs, half of the dance floor are popping out for a crafty ‘Salmon and Trout’ halfway through the DJs set, so jocks are having a tough time trying to keep the dance floor momentum going. How are you managing to get around that problem?
Thankfully I haven’t noticed a mass exodus from the dance floor during the gigs that I have played, and hopefully it will only be a handful that ever leave at the same time… an empty dance floor is never fun.
A vitally important, but much underrated, job is the warm-up set. How do you think the first slot of the night should ideally be constructed?
The key part of any warm up slot is to get people on to the floor dancing… and the best way to do that is to play the tunes that people recognise. There is no point in playing the hardest stuff that you have, or the newest tune that you’ve bought — unless it suits the warm up.
In my opinion, the best way to get folk on the dance floor is to play something funky and vocal. There’s no point in boshing out your biggest tunes at 145bpm early doors, you’ll just clear the dance floor rather than fill it. For the warm up, the tunes have to be those that are easily recognised — remixes or cheeky bootlegs are always well received too.
Another very important part of the DJ’s job is being able to read the crowd correctly, so that your musical selection can match their reactions; how do you endeavour to do this?
It’s really easy to be all consumed by what’s going on in the DJ booth and be concentrating so hard that you forget to look up at the clubbers in front of you. The key to reading the crowd is to watch them and watch their reaction to the tunes that you are playing. If you notice people leaving the dance floor in their droves then you know your tunes just aren’t doing the damage, and you need to have a change of tact.
As a DJ it’s also important to do your research into the night that you are going to be playing at and find out exactly what kind of tunes are going down well, and how the clubbers have responded to the DJs that were on before your own set. Preparation is the key, and always make sure you have as many tunes with you as possible, so its less likely that you will get caught out. You don’t want to turn up to your set and find it’s much harder than you anticipated and that none of your tunes will fit into the way the night has been styled.
One great way to build your own DJ career is to start your own night and give your self a main room slot. Have you got any plans to do that? And if so, what elements would you put in to make sure that your club night made for one great night out?
Although I would love to run my own night, I haven’t got any plans to do so at the moment as I want to concentrate on my DJ’ing and production, which occupies just about all of my spare time. If I were to run a night though, I think that it’s essential that you find a good well located venue that already has a solid reputation. You need plenty of time to be able to properly advertise the night, with flyers posted on the various dance forums and you also need to carefully choose your line-up. I think the best line up would be one that gives new talent the chance to play out for the first time, as well as using well established local DJs who have their own following and then a well known headline DJ.
A good way to get your own tracks released is to start up your own label; again, what work would you put in to make sure that it was a success?
At the moment I don’t have any plans to start up my own label, although again, it’s something that I would consider for the future, depending on how I’m getting on with the production side of things. You need to find a sales tactic that will interest those who are on the look out for buying music, and make them pay attention to your label over someone else’s. Good self promotion is definitely one way to do this, and a review in one of the dance magazines will also help a treat. If I were to start thinking about setting up my own label, I would definitely speak to friends who have already done this themselves to get any tips to ensure that it would be a success.
So what else can we expect from Simon Qudos in 2008? And what sort of year is it shaping up to be for him?
2008 is certainly shaping up to be very good Greg, I’ve got some gigs coming up that I’m really excited about. The 12th April will see me at the Blue Mountain Club in Bristol, where I will be appearing in the main room for Nyce 1 unleashed + Friends. This night is in aid of the Callum Appeal fundraiser and all proceeds are going to the Callum Appeal. It’s looking like it will be a very successful night and I’m excited that I am on the same line-up as Lisa Pin Up, Kym Ayres and Adam Lab4 to name a few. More details can be found at www.nyce1.moonfruit.com
I’m also going to be showing my face up in Manchester a bit more often as I have been invited to be one of the resident DJs at Wobble, a monthly day time party being held on the 1st Sunday of every month at Scubar, Manchester (www.myspace.com/wobblemanchester)
On the 26 April I’ll be playing at the next Tonk night in Eastbourne, which is run by Joe Pearce. Having checked the night out just before Christmas when BK headlined, it’s fair to say that the clubbers down there are well up for it so I’m looking forward to experiencing the night from the other side of the decks. I’ll also be playing at an electro set at The Scala in London on 10 May for Funk Deluxe, and joining the Funk Deluxe crew in Ibiza in June.
I’ll also be spending more time in the studio this year too, so you can expect more releases from myself throughout 2008, as well as some collaborations with other producers.
Photos courtesy of Sean O'Dell. Not to be reproduced without permission.
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Other Features By Greg Lynn:
Get Contagious with JP & Jukesy part 2
Get Contagious with JP & Jukesy part 1
The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable.
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Nice one mate. Looking forward to catching up with you soon. 
Nice bloke who makes great tunes. 