Q-BiK interviewed by X-Press Magazine (Perth)

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Q-BIK
For The Love Of Drum’n’Bass

Q-BIK, aka PJ Ehsani, is a massive Sons Of Anarchy and Breaking Bad fan. He also loves reality TV shows concerning deadliest cats on National Geographic – something he got into whilst touring America and Europe over the last two years. ANNABEL MACLEAN chats with the Perth based drum’n’bass producer ahead of his gigs at Southbound and Big Day Out.


Q-BIK does not like Asian food but he does have a soft spot for sushi. The Perth based, New Zealand expat has spent the last couple of years showcasing his mad drum’n’bass to fans in Europe, the UK, Canada, America, South America, Asia, New Zealand and across regional Australia. “It’s really hard going to Asian countries - I mean there’s some stuff I eat but a lot of it, I’m not a fan of,” he says down the line from his Perth base. “I think it’s more of the fish sauce stuff and Thai dishes that I’m not really a fan of.”

Having had a “crazy couple of years” on the road and in the air, Ehsani is planning on focusing on production back home in 2012 and scaling back on the touring. Globetrotting has opened several doors for the DJ and producer – his first 12” My House was signed to UK’s Planet Funk Records and gained support from a fair few international big wigs. “It seemed to be very well received by so many different people,” he says of My House, still in awe. “Pete Tong even played it on his Radio One Essential show which really helped and Pete Tong doesn’t play drum’n’bass so that was a massive honour and it certainly opened the doors for me a lot over in Europe and the UK and the USA as well.”

It wasn’t only Europe, America and the UK who were receptive to drum’n’bass, Ehsani did a show in Columbia last year which was massive. “They have such a good thing down there but they don’t have finances or the money to bring over massive, international names,” he says. “But, the scene there is quite big; we had about 500 people in the club that night and I was like ‘really, in Columbia?’.” There were a couple of dodgy moments though – “It was crazy – when we were driving along from the airport to the hotel and the promoter was like ‘ok, in this area we need to lock our doors and roll our windows up’. There were a few times like that… driving home from the gig back to the hotel – our taxi driver was going about 100km down a 50 [kilometre] area running red lights, so I felt a bit uncomfortable then.”

Ehsani recently played to 700 people in Broome alongside Greg Packer and MC Assassin which turned out to be the biggest show Broome’s had in the last year. Geraldton and Karratha are also high up on the ‘best shows’ list for Ehsani but sometimes, punters don’t know how to act at a gig, which is why Ehsani has MC Seeka and MC Xsessiv alongside him for parts of his current national tour. “I’ve been using both of those guys and I’ve worked on tunes for both of them and then I’ve released tunes with both of them so it’s always nice to have an MC when I go on tour,” he says.

“It adds that extra element and the interaction with the crowd and for our type of music, sometimes it’s important – [especially] when you play places like Geraldton and you just play a track and people are like ‘ok, what do I do here’. We played in Kalgoorlie in the middle of the year and that was weird. Nobody really knew what to do – they all just kind of stood there. Maybe we have to play some music videos of people dancing – doing the Melbourne Shuffle or something (laughs).”