The Echio Quiz with James Harcourt

How did you learn music and did you have mentors?
I learned music from a young age. We had a piano in my house when I was growing up. I did some stuff at school orchestras and all of that stuff, but I didn't really like all the rules and stuff around it and so joined bands and it was a bit more no rules, and I really loved that. But then the electronic music thing came a little later, and I know I didn't have mentors.

Tell us about a key feedback you received during your career and from whom?
It wasn't advice given directly to me, but I kind of picked it up from watching an online interview with Patrice Bäumel and Paul Nolan. And it was the idea that in a track everything should serve a clear purpose. And so something doesn't need to be there. It's got to go. And that was really I was kind of starting to get that, but it just brought that home.

What is good music feedback in your opinion?
Good music feedback is honest, it is constructive. It doesn't isn't afraid of being disliked. It isn't afraid of it. It also isn't judging, and it just isn't coming from a place of cynicism and sort of nastiness. It just comes from the purest form. So really what that means is, you know, I can give feedback on music that I would never normally listen to that can be fairly positive, but it would also be it would have the caveat that, you know, I would just wouldn't listen to it or I wouldn't play it, but I know that it would work in certain hands and it would be a good quality thing in certain scenarios. And if something is kind of good to a point but has flaws, I'll just point them out.

What feedback would you give to your first release (please name the release)?
My first release was in 1999. It was called Scale, and it was on a Canadian label called Release Records. My feedback to that in today's context would be just mix it better and pick better sounds and de-clutter it and low pass and just all these basic mixing things that everyone can do. Now, even I can do it, but at the time my feedback probably would be just at the peak moments of the track, review how many things you are playing and really strip them down to their essence and remove everything that just isn't necessary. It's kind of the same as that key feedback that I spoke about earlier.

If you could spend a day in the studio with one of your heroes, who would it be?
I think it would be Quincy Jones just because his touch was magical and I loved the sound of that time. I'd love to see what was going on.

What’s the object in your studio (musical or not) you can’t live without?
It's probably the computer, right? Because that's the thing that without it, I can't really make a track. I've got all these machines, but they feed into that central hub. So yeah, it would be the computer. Boring answer, I know, but yeah, that's the truth.

If you were not making music what would you do?
Well, firstly, I'm not just making music, I'm doing other things and I don't think it's possible to make music 100% of the time. I just think it's counterproductive to try. But if I could do whatever I wanted during the time I wasn't making music, I would probably write. I'd work, build up a literary work, and yeah, I've got a number of business ideas and I would love to be doing that.