QUELL is a producer and sound artist that uses hardware electronics and found sounds to transverse industrial clatter, synthetic ambience and angular repetition of EBM rhythms. Last year saw the release of their sophomore Endless EP via Dero Arcade (Gadigal Country/Sydney).
Endless is a loose exploration of a personal acquaintance with a man of professional violence and events that occurred over that time, according to QUELL. The first video single from this EP, Degenerate, delves into 'performative hardness' and the juxtaposition of fragility.
ALT’s very own JESS WILLOUGHBY chatted with QUELL ahead of their Perth debut with V on July 15 at Lucy’s Love Shack…
// QUELL // DEGENERATE
Your sophomore EP release, Endless, documents a period in your life where you were acquainted with a man of violence. How did this experience serve to inspire you artistically to create an entire musical work about them?
I suppose I made the music as a means of making sense of things and contextualising experiences. I'm not sure I really knew at the time that what I was making was informed by what was happening. I do remember having a real compulsion to spend a lot of time in noise and repetitive rhythms, making sound environments as a kind of sublimation, and also using genre tropes as a way of lightening the weight of things. Taking the piss while acknowledging the seriousness of it all.
The experience between you and this individual seems profound. How did it impact you emotionally while writing this EP?
Things were pretty intense! But I made it out okay. It's not the first nor last time curiosity has nearly killed the cat, as it were. It made me appreciate my community greatly.
How does this emotional experience translate in a live context?
The live sets have kept evolving, but still take aim at the body in lots of ways. They change between states fairly erratically; harnessing rather than resisting an unwieldy attention span. I tend to try to create excessive sound environments where I can channel excesses of my own, in the hope that audiences can do the same, building a big nasty exo-body of our bullshit for half an hour or so.
// QUELL // ENDLESS
Can you describe the song you most connect with personally on the release and the story behind this piece?
In regards to the man and events that informed the record, I don't think either of them are deserving of re-telling or broadcasting, and I'm not a very good storyteller anyway. I often lose track and they become quite long-winded and disjointed, which might explain why I've chosen sound as a medium for expression. I do remember finding the synth patch in the second half of Endless, which was a fun afternoon, twisting and untwisting my guts with a big bass amp. I could hear a feeling I'd carried externalised quite accurately, like a very relieving vomit or something.
What would be your ideal contemporary Australian gig (in an ideal world) and why?
I'll always love a well-curated and diversely booked rave in an interesting space with a big sound system, an audience of community-minded weirdos and no cops.
Catch V make their live debut in Perth at Lucy’s Love Shack with Quell on Friday, July 15. Grab your tickets now here.