OQ
OQ began when drummer and beatmaker, Cole Quamme, played a show in support of Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang as the drummer in Milwaukee-based band, The Fatty Acids. Quamme started making beats influenced by Nabay’s definitive afrobeat and noted the direct rhythmic parallels to traditional American folk and bluegrass. After seeing multi-instrumentalist and producer, Liam O’Brien, play with midwest freak-folk collective, Holy Sheboygan!, Quamme recruited O’Brien, who developed the interlocking rhythms into songs based on Celtic melodies. By the time they’d gotten around to producing their first EP, Paradice 1, the project had taken on surprising new forms.
Paradice 1 exemplifies this evolution. Melodic ruminations on humanity dance over sustained grooves and complex polyrhythms. It’s a sound that hearkens a distant past and in the same stroke, heralds in the coming of a not-so-distant future. Streaming soon exclusively on the PEOPLE platform