Interview Quio

Non neghiamo che ci ha sorpreso molto avere l'occasione di ascoltare una traccia come Bratwurst poco prima di un giro estivo in Germania e di cogliere divertitamente il fatto che ai tedeschi (come forse a chiunque altro) gli stereotipi stanno stretti (sfideremmo chiunque a mantenere la calma quando alla domanda "Italiani?" certi stranieri fanno seguire la solita carrellata di associazioni semantiche del tipo: "Pizza... Mandolino... Spaghetti... Espresso... Cappuccino... Mafia... Berlusconi..."). Con questa traccia sullo stereotipo tedesco esordia il secondo album della Mc e cantante berlinese Quio, prodotto da AGF, che segue a Like Oooh!, disco che due anni fa ricevette plausi dalla critica e (ciò che spesso conta maggiormente) dal pubblico. Come un pesciolino rosso in overdose di efedrina, Quio guizza tra diverse sonorità che vanno dall'underground al mainstream per poi rituffarcisi, schizzando dub, hip-hop, soul, emulsioni digitali e gocce di sampling che finiscono per occludere i timpani di chi assiste alle sue pregevoli convoluzioni vocaliche, mostrando una teatrale integrazione con chiunque si trovi a performare con lei: tra le numerose collaborazioni che compaiono su questo album spiccano la Billie Hoiday del trip hop, Nicolette (ex Massive Attack), il virtuoso del Baile Funk, Edu K, e il vellutato timbro della fenomenale cantante appena sedicenne Lise. Si susseguono gradevoli e bizzarre sperimentazioni di ogni genere, che sfociano in una specie di rendez-vous amicale nella chiusa Chilaine, in cui Quio chiama a raccolta tutti i suoi amici più stretti per una traccia dub davvero divertente co-prodotta da Tricky D degli Elektronauten. Abbiamo voluto scambiare due parole con la protagonista di questo lavoro, trovando conferme all'estro e alla simpatia che eravamo persuasi di trovare in Quio fin dall'ascolto di questo lavoro e del suo precedente. Buona lettura e datevi un ascolto alle spassose divagazioni musicali di questa frizzante e dinamica berliner!!! Quio "Phiu" (AGF Produktion) 01.Bratwurst feat.Darius James & K Kemikoski 02.Grow Together feat.Lise 03.So Loud feat.Nicolette 04.Rising Tide feat.Lise 05.I Jump feat.AGF 06.Me Mucker 07.Minha Rima feat.Edu K 08.Come Closer 09.Mole feat.Lise 10.Shell Shocked feat.Susius 11.Better Mood 12.Chilaine feat.Nanie, Dr Data, Lotta, O Laterne & Lempapa

Hi there. Great record... a "bumpy, buumpy, buuuuumpy" and "zacky" record "uber alles", above stereotypes among them presumably Kraftwerk and Hitler!! A part of jokes, it's a really funny and well-forged record... Could you talk about its gesture? Thank you ;-D you would be suprised to hear that most people simply dont seem to notice "bratwurst" although it is the first track?! weird... I guess it doesnt have just one gesture. The opening one is : how to find yourself in the descriptions other people give of you. Even before they have met you by the most basic facts of your nationality and your gender. The general one might be: I don't want people to think they have the power to define me in any way, or give me a name. Because naming someone else gives power to the ones who name, or is an implication of their power. And I also don't want to be controlled in other ways. Especially not by people who think because they give themselves a serious appearance they have more right to speak out loud. Seriousness is a tool of dominance. Originally I wanted to call the album "seriously", so maybe the main gesture would be: don't take it serious, seriously! I mean what i say, honestly, but I don't want to steamroll over listeners. but of course I want to flatten them with my stuff. Haha. Anyway you won't get me. I am as wriggely as a worm!

What does "Phiu" mean? A sort of decoy or a sort of call-to-order? No. an expression used to express disgust, haha. filtered through the ears of my finnish artwork designer kaisa kemikoski, the original word is "PFUI!". Mainly it is used to control dogs not to do any pooey things like sniffing in wrong places or eating the wrong food. it was the favorite german word of my british ex-boyfriend, the filmmaker Paul Leyton. Another musician friend of mine said he quite enjoyed that the german language was so well designed for swearing and shouting insults. But back to Phiu: I was really happy about this misunderstanding, because it changed the original word pfui into something that rhymed with Quio, as if the word had bent its head towards me and was somehow bastardised by my name. And as you may know, I love misunderstandings, so it made perfect sense. why then would i call myself Pfui? why do rappers like to have "Parental Advice" stickers on their albums?

In Grow Together, you spread some lessons of civilization to human beings with that strange protuberance called penis... fortunately not every men is phallus-centric... Even if I know that someone have set some courses up on how to improve sexual relationships in Berlin... I haven't heard of the courses...hm...I didn't want to address phallucentrism though. Well maybe though I always do, haha. I really like "spread some lessons of civilization to human beings"! I can't really find the question though..hm...i didnt mean to attack patriarchy in an evil way, I wanted to hint at something that is rarely mentioned. That is, that women experience men as tender just as men experience women as tender. Like the skin on an erect penis which is so soft. And that men should have a closer look at how their gender role stiffles them. After women have managed to be allowed to wear trousers, why are men not allowed to wear skirts? Not that I think it suits them particularly well, hehe. As I have a son and a daughter I follow how they are turned into a girl and a boy, and that hurts. With "Grow Together" I wanted to express my hope for change for men and women. There is still such a big fear of being held for gay, and the discussion (e.g. in the media) about the change of men from being mainly responsible for financing the family to more responsible fathers has just begun. Of course this is also not easy for women. Because the power structure is still less favorable for women, and so I found myself being slightly pissed off when I heard about some electronic musicians who staged themselves as proud fathers on their record cover. I thought: so now they want to have that too?! haha. but generally I salute these kind of new images. Hopefully they are signs of a shared and more open world. Wow that was really idealistic...

AGF remarked that in a way authorship is a commerciale affair... But in your viewpoint does art coincide with market? In a way or another it has always been so... I have just been to Bejing and someone told me that the chinese artists often reproduce styles because they sell, because in China there is no funding system by the state. My first thought was: "How terrible!" But then, of course, the realisaton came back to me that in the West it is also often like that even with funding system. Of course reproducing the idea of others may also have something to do with unoriginality, hehe. I am very strongly of the opinion that art coincides with the market in one or the other way. The most obvious example is women in HipHop. In Germany female MCs don't really sell. And in US HipHop, apart from Missy, the role models for women you have take to sell are pretty unattractive and limited. I have just been asked to write an article about myself in a book about female Rap (Female HipHop. Realness, Roots und Rap Models) basically wrote the whole thing about why I am NOT HipHop, because saying that I was would be too much of a limitation for me as an artist. I also think that as an artist you have to be aware of what is going on around you in every way, I respond to the music other people produce, the lyrics they write, of course not only of contemporary music, but also. And so you are in the stress field of contemporary arts and culture, and you might include contemporary sounds and ideas, which always might be read as clever market calculation (although in my commercial state at the moment it would be ridiculous to argue like this, haha). The too sides are always inseperably connected though.

Quio, what could you report from this important artistic collaboration? I was often surprised at how AGF and me found shared viewpoints on lyrics and music, because at first sight our musical heritage seems so different. It is really good fun and fruitious to work together with agf. Of course, she can also be the daughter-of-a-soldier- female-general when it comes to me being unconcentrated whilst recording vocals, hehe. But that is something that I dig. I really dig it when people are honest even if it hurts.

You showed considerable expressive skills in this record as a singer and mcs, but sometimes experimental side of art and music is maybe not so open to women. In your opinion, what are most considerable differences between man and woman in perceiving art? Does it change anything on the basis of sex??? I wouldn't say in general that the experimental side of music is less open to women. It is for sure more open to women than mainstream HipHop is, apart from when you want to be a sexy dancer in a video, hehe. It's not as if you are invited in though. But once you are there you enjoy more freedom than elsewhere. I try to invite girls into Rap with workshops, because unless you have a boyfriend or brother, it's got to be difficult to set your foot in there. Apart from your insecurity of wether it is possible for yourself to do, there might be the simple question of where to start. Percieving ART in general is quite a broad field. We have all gone through the same school of how we look at things through our shared cultural upbringing. So e.g. the male view on (female) bodies is also the female one in certain way, you can't really divide the two or find an original "female" gaze. Of course, I react differently to sexist lyrics in HipHop than most men. And also to a male nude. So with direct expressions that have got something to do with our gender I would say that there is a difference, but with abstract art and other topics e.g. cities or so there is no differnce. Because the line of difference in how we look at art I would rather draw in character and elements of personal and cultural upbringing, rather than reducing it to gender.

It seems Phiu is a sort of manual of (conceptual) martial arts... A provokative question... Do you believe in the power of words and lyrics yet? I do believe in the power of words. but I also believe that with lyrics you can only take in what you are open for. When I was a teenager I intensively read and transcribed lyrics (I still do...). The interpretation is still up to you though. unless the statements are unambiguously clear. The kind of texts where that is the case, have always deterred me though (where the artist tries to tell you how to feel or think. I always have the notion to resist that), so I always try to leave some space for personal interpretation. "You get me? Please don't...make yourself up, cause I won't!" (from "Masterpiece" on "like oooh!")

What's the main error music criticians have made till nowadays in speaking about electronic music? That all experimental electronic musicians are deep and clever, haha.

Who's that nice puppet??? Featuring in Me Mucker? :) Nice puppet? Have you been at my gig in portugal? errm, you mean Edu K? he is a really cool brasilian musician, who became known for his Baile Funk stuff. He is on Man Recordings, alabel of friend of mine, Daniel Haaksman. I asked him wether he would be interested in cooperating with me, he was totally up for it. I didn't ask him to do the portugese lesson (I just asked him to write some portugese rhyme for me) he produced them himself, he is a total afficionado ;-)

I really appreciated that cameo with Nicolette with nasal sounds and nasal springing of voice as well as that shouted So Loud. Funny... Will you ever duet on live stage? Thank you ;) let's put it like that: it is not planned yet.

Another great track in my opinion is I Jump, especially for the contrast between smoothey and delicate singing and acid and buzzling sounds... What about your emotions while performing it? The lyrics are an expression of a bunch of feelings put together. The overall feeling while singing it is that one of feeling detached, jumping and landing somewhere remote, while on the surface a storm is raging.

Do you speak Portuguese? No, I don't! It was great fun learning the lines edu k had prepared for me. I thought I did quite well, but I performed it to a promoter in Portugal and he had problems understanding me, phh! hehe.

Mole seems to be a metaphor... Is a lover blind like a mole? Blind like a mole does not refer to a lover who is too blind to see the "bad" sides of his/her lover. It rather has something to do with the feeling when you feel strongly drawn to someone emotionally. you want to be close, want to see and feel something of the other person that cant be seen, cant be held, the inside.

According to you, should an artist be necessarily dissolute? No. But it is probably of great use to know and cognize your dissolute sides. Basically all your sides... I don't like it when people have this idea of themselves as artists where there is everything allowed to them because they are artists. You don't have to follow every notion, and as far as business goes if you are dissolute with that (not quite sure about the translation of this word) you most probably wont be able to get anywhere.

Any future plans? Not any but many. I have a few invitations as feature waiting in line. And I am working on my show at the moment. I have bought a music programme and am planning to learn how to use it. I have planned for years to produce video installations, but that will probably have to wait. ;)