The Quark Project
The Quark Project
Quark Mk I
I finished my music studies in 2008 and set about clearing up the confusion in my mind about my musical identity. Not wanting to throw away all the years of intuitive songwriting, and at the same time wanting to expand my horizons, I decided to experiment with fusing elements of the old and the new. The first incarnation of Quark featured violin (Ant Cawthorm-Blazeby), double bass (Logan Byrne) and me on guitar and vocals. We played a mix of new arrangements of my old songs, a few covers, and some traditional folk sounds (from my involvement with Ant and his band Celtis). We did a few gigs with this line-up until Logan moved on to focus on gigs with local jazz bands, and Quark continued as a duo.
Dan and I met, almost literally, on stage at Splashy Fen in 2013. Ant was the featured acoustic artist for the year, and, like me in 2006, invited a variety of friends to guest on his set. We found we had some common musical goals, and together with Ant we spent a weekend in the Drakensberg, jamming and thinking up new ideas. This became the second incarnation of Quark, adding some new ideas and techniques to our old sound, and later in the year touring to Cape Town. I'd been invited to participate in a conference and concert at Stellenbosch University, and decided to make the most of the trip by driving down with the band and doing gigs along the way.
Quark Mk II at the Cottage Club, Cape Town
Quark Mk III at Music in the Hills
After the tour, the third incarnation of Quark resolved intself into bass player Dan, myself and the loop pedal. We began to spend more time looking for the unexpected, and experimenting with cross-rhythms and unusual chord progressions. The album became the end goal of the project, and with our common interest in space-time and the universe, we picked that as our album theme, giving us us a wealth of conceptual material. When Marius Botha from Headroom Studios expressed an interest in recording us, we took up the offer and laid ten tracks down for the Jetshock album in the relaxed and friendly atmosphere of Marius and Lu's home. After completing the album recording at the end of 2017, we toured to Cape Town again in 2018.
2019 was a quiet year, with Dan's day job taking him away often to Tanzania, and me doing the occasional solo gig. And then 2020 happened (or didn't). We're looking forward to reviving the project in 2021.