Musicians like to use the phrase “a snapshot in time” to express the permanence of a recording, but it only offers a glimpse into the lifetime and growth of a song. Songwriting is a perpetual process. Music publishing tends to obscure that process, creating the assumption that a recorded song is the final or official version, but more and more fissures are starting to tear that narrative completely apart. Early demo versions leak online, songs get remixed, covered and reinterpreted, and changing technologies demand that older albums get remastered - all offering a glimpse at a life that exists before and after the “final” published version.
With Spin Cycle, Afiara Quartet and DJ Skratch Bastid are turning that process on its head, opening it up to the ears of their audience and proving just how continuous the songwriting process can be.
There are three steps to Spin Cycle. First, Afiara had four composers (Kevin Lau, Laura Silberberg, Rob Teehan, and Dinuk Wijeratne) write works for their quartet, then took those pieces to the studio to record. Then they had DJ Skratch Bastid (aka Paul Murphy) remix the recorded versions into his own compositions, using the originals as source material for sampling. Third, Afiara put Skratch Bastid’s versions back into the hands of the original composers, who wrote new material to be played along with the remixes. The final result isn’t final at all: Spin Cycle documents the evolution of the songs each step of the way, sequencing them side by side and emphasizing conversation and process over finality.
It's rare to see the original song published alongside the reinterpretation that samples it, and even rarer to have a document of the original artist responding to that reinterpretation. Having also worked with Kid Koala in the past, the self-described “ensemble for the 21st century” Afiara Quartet aren’t new to pushing the boundaries of classical music. Speaking to the quartet’s cellist, Adrian Fung, it’s clear that impulse is what fuels their creativity.
Chart Attack: What interests you in the idea of music composition as an ongoing conversation rather than a final, recorded document?
Adrian Fung: Essentially, we were trying to make a disc to begin with where we got four great composers to write us pieces and to celebrate the things that we love about music. It didn’t have to be about classical music. We all know and love classical music, but we also love pop elements, of hip-hop and funk and reggae. All of the things that we hear on the street here in Toronto.
Great art is only abandoned, never finished.
What Paul was able to bring... you should’ve seen the composers' eyes widen when they saw what he was capable of. The conversation really goes both ways though, because the composers then had a chance to respond to his remixes and write new parts for us. So some people, like Kevin Lau, he completely changed what Skratch had done. He remixed Skratch pretty heavily. Some others just really went with what Skratch had and added really complex string parts and new melodies to be played alongside that.
It was really interesting to see that process unfold. Every single stage can be heard and performed alone and still be very successful. I think that if you had asked a composer to write a work for DJ and string quartet, it may not have come out as good. It really became something where there’s a frontier. The composers were stretched as the DJ was stretched.
What was it about the four composers that made you choose them specifically? Was there something about their work that spoke to that idea of urbanity and smashing together of cultures you described?
Definitely. First of all, everybody is around the same age. I’m 34, Paul is 32, I think everyone involved is around their late twenties/early thirties. These four personalities are really great composers and more than that they were musicians that held the same kind of vision and principles that we did in terms of exploring.
We always go back to the forefathers: Haydn was going for gypsy music, Bartok went all around trying to discover new music, Brahms used Hungarian dances and Bach was really interested in what the French were doing when the Germanic tradition was such that the Germans thought they knew exactly what they were doing. Had Bach not done that, we wouldn’t have the French overture, we wouldn’t have the English sonatas, we wouldn’t have our cello suites with the bourees and courantes.
Sometimes classical musicians, when we take something on, we want to make sure that no one thinks it’s gimmicky, but we also really need to realize that our forefathers, the ones that we celebrate, were very very globalist and they were always looking at new sounds and new ways of incorporating what they had heard. When you find something that’s new and difficult to do, you realize where art can live.
Did Skratch Bastid have free creative rein over what he did with the source material, or was there a focus in mind?
He definitely had free rein. If we’re going to ask somebody to do something, then we have to trust them to do it. He understood the scope of the project. We wanted him to just listen to these quartets and see what inspired him. So he heard these things and we played it through for him.
We had to learn all four pieces in three weeks. He was in the studio with us as we were recording our parts and would say things like “Can I hear that part again? I’m going to just record the viola for this one.” And then he started building something by sampling the quartet and what he had in front of him. So we totally let him do whatever he wanted to do. We wanted his voice to really live in the second stage. So he could think of it in terms of how to wow people, as a producer, what would sound great to hear on a disc, and as a composer as well, in terms of how he was going to unfold this story.
How surprised were you by the final results? What about the composers?
Oh, every single time, from the delivery of the scores for stage one, I hit the roof. These guys brought the most beautiful, the most fun to play music that we have in our repertoire. We loved it.
When Paul had done Laura Silberberg’s remix first, he sent it to me and I was listening to it every single morning just as a power jam when I got up and ate my breakfast. We really worked together as a team, the Afiara Quartet and Paul, to make sure that all the stage two stuff where he was involved hit the points that he really wanted. I was very surprised because you can kind of chart a course for where you’re going to go but essentially, you’re never quite sure how it’s going to work. And if you control every single turn, and you don’t leave yourself open to spontaneity, and you know exactly what’s going to happen, then you’ve probably failed. You never gave your vision a chance to enlarge itself, to take you somewhere that you hadn’t known before. Afiara Quartet is the executive producer of this project but really we want to celebrate the DJ and the composers, and their voices and how they really brought something new with this.
How do you think hearing each step will affect the listening experience?
What I love is that people are going to be listening for the changes. Which gives people a goal. A lot of times it’s good to listen to music and lay back and say “sock it to me, I just want to know what you’re saying.” You know? You can do that with this disc. But then if someone needs a little bit of guidance, they can guide themselves. They can be like “hey, I heard that part before, where did he take that?” It can be like a puzzle. You can listen to this and see something unfold. It’s like hearing two really smart and talented people talk and understand it. We’re all entering at the same level here when we listen to this. It’s not that you need to know about certain compositional techniques before you listen to this, you can just listen to it and you’re as credible as a judge.
That poses an interesting question about when a song is “finished.” Someone might view the record as a documentation of a process, draft versions playing out before a final, but is that how you think about each song?
Great art is only abandoned, never finished. On that wavelength, we play as a quartet that gets recorded. As recording artists, we realize that a recording is only a snapshot of how we think and speak at any given moment. You can really crush yourself and say, this is the one thing that I’m going to say and I’m going to be remembered for it forever. We actually believe it’s a snapshot and own up to whatever’s been recorded.
We’ve been performing it a little bit now, on CBC Radio Q and our pre-release show and during our rehearsals, and really, we change it a little bit every time. Part of the music-making process for me and for the Afiara Quartet is that we’re never trying to recreate what we’ve done in the practice room. What we want to do is learn how to play together and learn what works and what doesn’t in rehearsal. Rehearsal is a discovery process. It’s a time to experiment, it’s fun. It’s actually a very fun kind of exercise. And you build confidence doing that to know that you can perform.
There is also a fourth stage to this project. We encourage people to remix this stuff themselves and when we did CBC Q, the host Shad was like “well the fourth stage of this is going to be when I rap to it.” There’s actually a fourth stage to Kevin Lau’s already. We’re going to be playing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra as a concerto grosso kind of thing. Meaning that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is going to be backing Skratch Bastid and Afiara Quartet up. It’s yet another thing that no one has ever done. It’s very rare to have string quartet concerto where the string quartet are the main soloists. There are maybe two or three of these works out there. And it’s rare to have a DJ concerto, although it’s happening more now with people like Nicole Lizée, but essentially nobody has ever had this, a DJ quintet with concerto grosso. That fourth stage will be happening March 2016.
LINER NOTES: Afiara Quartet and Skratch Bastid’s Spin Cycle is a conversation in song by Michael Rancic | Chart Attack.
