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Detroit’s Ryan Crosson has been plying his trade in Europe for a number of years, whilst running the highly influential Visionquest imprint alongside Shaun Reeves and Lee Curtiss and formerly Seth Troxler. Ryan took time out whilst in London to chat with us about what it’s like to warm up for Marco Carola, the influences of Pink Floyd, delving into ambient soundscapes and his all new label.
You’ve just played shows at Rumors and Music On this season – how did they go? It was good, it was the first time I’d done the Terrace on my own, the other couple of times I’ve done it with Shaun, so that was really fun, I thought it was great. There was a decent capacity within about 45 minutes of starting so that was nice. That was cool.
Then I hadn’t done Rumors at all the whole summer, I played back-to-back with Bill [Patrick], that was nice. It was a good little extended trip for a change, instead of the old in and out.
Is it a nice change playing on the beach? Well, it’s not directly on the beach, it’s inside the restaurant area, but it’s close enough. It was nice just to be able to chill and play some deeper records that didn’t have to go anywhere. You could just ease in and out of stuff and just keep a groove, then by the last hour when people were more in the mood to dance we picked it up a bit, because we played for about three hours.
What’s it like to warm up for Marco? It’s cool, I like it! When they open the club the place is empty and you can build and build. You don’t really have to go too crazy if you don’t want to. Marco just sits on grooves, he throws in his effects and does his thing, but then he’s right back to the groove again. Normally I liked to start with some dubbier music, some dubby techno and then build into stuff from there. I ended up playing a little bit of techno the other week and it was fine, it was really good. Then when you’re done you’ve got to brave the crowd like everyone else. Last week it was packed!
You’re playing Music On again on the 12th September – have you formed a good relationship with the party? Yeah, the first time we played was last year, I wouldn’t say I know Marco well, but we got to know each other. They asked me and Shaun to play at the end of last year. Then back in February they asked if we wanted to get more involved and proposed three or four dates and some things will carry on into next year. I really like them, I get on well with them and they’re pretty straight forward with the way they do things, there’s no games.
You’ve recently taken Visionquest to Watergate and you’ll be playing Fabric soon as well as a 5 hour set at We Love… – what do you bring to the table as Visionquest? What’s the dynamic between you, Lee and Shaun? I guess it’d depend on where we’re playing on the night because we’re not doing a big-ass back-to-back. We’re doing back-to-backs at festivals, but the longer the sets go, we’re trying to break it up a little bit more. We can each do our thing for a shorter period and then come together towards the end.
The We Love… thing, we’re going to be opening for Sasha so that’ll be another gradual slow build into trying to get the perfect warm-up for him and to get everyone buzzing at the right time before he steps in. Fabric is going to be like we always do, all night long, switching in and out. Laura Jones is going to be with us so it’s going to be eight or nine hours of playing together.
We’ve got another one at The Arches with Slam and Liebing. That’ll be us all night as well, like a 10pm-3am set where we’re kind of moving in and out of each other and playing back-to-back here and there.
Is it important to move in that kind of techno crowd as well as in house circles? For me it is yeah, I like to play everything. Yeah, I’m not going to play as hard as Chris Liebing does, but I do like to play techno and stuff and I think it’s important to play for all types of crowds, absolutely. If you were doing the same thing you’d be fucking bored, and they’d be bored of you. It’s bad enough when you have a label or something and people expect you to DJ exactly like the records you release. So when you’re able to play at different kinds of parties people are like ‘Oh! I didn’t know you could do that!’ That’s nice because people in the scene pigeonhole you in a half second. When you can step out and do something a little bit different and a little more edgy I’m all up for it.
How do you think you all vary in sound? It depends. Shaun plays more of the deeper house stuff, I play more on the heavier and faster end and Lee kind of floats somewhere in between there. Lee dips into a little more Chicago house than Shaun and I do. Like I said Shaun’s a bit a slower and deeper. Even peak time, nine times out of ten who won’t play as hard as I do – when we play back-to-back he’ll have to be like ‘no, no, calm down’. Me and Shaun keep each other in check in a way and Lee slides right into the middle nicely.
When Visionquest started, experimentation and pushing boundaries were a big motivating factor – is that still true with what you’re doing now? I think with the releases there’s a little bit less of that for the time being. We were so engulfed in doing albums and because of the albums we were pushing album singles on top of our normal singles. That’s cool and we were very happy to do that, but it’s just too wishy-washy going between album stuff and there was too much coming out. This year we kind of backed off the whole experimentation thing and kept it a little more straight forward, but next year we’ve already got stuff lined up to jump back in and experiment quite a bit. Next year will be a return to experimenting with stuff that isn’t just four-four.
There’s a clip on soundcloud of an ambient track – is this your personal way of moving towards experimentation? Will you pursue this further? Yeah, definitely, that track will probably come out on our new sub label Brachtune and I’m working on another thing that I did with Cesar Merveille before, which is a little bit jazz with ambient layers. I want to start cracking on with a solo album primarily and really layered sounds and field recordings – shit like that. It’s weird though because you’re supposed to have singles come out to promote the album, so maybe I’ll pick a few segments where I can layer some weird beats or vocals around it and those can be like the dance mixes for the singles and the album will just be this sound collage, if you will.
What has inspired your interest in that kind of sound? I don’t know. I think it’s just listening to different types of music over the years and finding certain bits here and there in odd places. I put the beginning of this Pink Floyd track, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, a piece of that in a podcast. I don’t know, just from years of listening to different stuff. Eno is a big one, my girlfriend’s really into him as well. As I got into pads and layers in tracks I started taking away beats and thought it was cool, so it just slowly happened. It’s something I wanted to do.
You’ve said before that Pink Floyd are the only band that still have an influence on you today – what exactly influences you from there sound? I think just the oddities to them and the echoes. There’s like a long string or a long pad and there are these guitar delays and things that float around, which have a good space – the way they use space. It’s cool to have those silences and pauses if you can do it tastefully and do it right. You don’t have to be in a hurry to go somewhere all the time. Just weird cosmic hypnosis – things they were doing back then that no one else was doing.
The new sub-label Brachtune – can you tell us the story behind this? Yeah, we’re getting a lot of stuff and we’re trying to be even more particular about what we’re releasing on Visionquest. There’s some stuff where we were thinking maybe or maybe not, so then we eventually thought maybe we’ll get it going on Brachtune and see if it works. If we can build something with an artist with a first release on Brachtune, it could help them and introduce them in a better way.
Some people don’t need an introduction, like Tolfrey, he’s been putting out records forever. Maybe for some of the younger guys who are getting their feet wet, it’s a way of getting their name out there a bit and then when they really have something that’s taking a step up we can get it out on Visionquest. Even me, I’ve got a bunch of stuff that I love, it’s cool and it works on the dance floor, but I’m thinking I won’t put it out on Visionquest. It’s just another outlet. If a friend comes to us with something weird and no one wants to take it we could be like ‘yeah, we can do that’. It’s not going to be a set schedule, it depends on the music we get in.
Why did you choose to re-release the Matt Tolfrey track? It was actually Matt’s idea. He knew we were getting this going and said he wanted to re-release it with some new mixes. I’ve been playing that track for like four years.
Finally, what’s next for you in terms of releases? I just mastered my Visionquest EP today, so that’ll be out mid-October. I’m going to do a Brachtune release which will hopefully be out in November. I did a sound design remix of this Renato Ratier track on D-Edge. Hopefully next year I can get the solo album out along with the thing with Cesar, but that’s kind of asking a lot so we’ll see!
This year’s been my most productive ever in terms of releases so I want to keep that ticking over, but not bog myself down with too much shit because I’ll get burnt out.
Ryan Crosson's remix of Chaim, Underwater is out now on Visionquest: http://btprt.dj/1uopMgT
Catch Ryan play Music On at Amnesia on 12th September and We Love at Space on Sunday 21st September.
Listen to Ryan Crosson on Pulse Radio.
On opening night, 
ERA promises to make its mark with some new club concepts for Cape Town. There are various events through the week, including jazz night on a Wednesday (to feature the acclaimed Dan Shout on saxophone) and Vinyl sessions on a Thursday - held at ERA café. The café is part of the lounge section upstairs, where there is also a restaurant serving cocktails and tapas. Entry to these events is free.
The upstairs section is also home to the free “warm up” sessions for Fridays and Saturdays, with the full-on party happening in the downstairs club area from around 10pm. These “warm ups” with DJs and producers and the fact that the club is including live instrumental acts, gives the club a fresh edge as this setup has not happened successfully in Cape Town yet. Time will tell…
Fridays are deep house party nights, this week featuring Thibo Tazz, Dave Dix and Karmi. Saturday sees the club’s “flagship” Techno night. As ERA founder Agugio says, “Techno is continuously moulding and reshaping as the foundation for Electronic Music. (These nights) are a homage to the very roots of this foundational sound”. This week features Kanan K7, Chris Jack and Killer Robot.
ERA is making a lot of promises. So far they have delivered, and based on my experience on Saturday I hope they continue to do so. Musicians, producers and DJs have been excited for the opening of this venue for quite some time and are pinning some high hopes on it in developing the electronic scene in Cape Town and South Africa as a whole. Our music industry is growing at an incredible speed, and I truly hope ERA can be part of this, and soak up all this Cape Town energy.
Marie-Claire de Villiers with assistance from Tunicia Philips 
