Exploring Steampunk: Interviewing the Clockwork Quartet

Yes, you did read the head­line right — I have an inter­view for you, with the pre­vi­ously men­tioned, and heav­ily emphas­ized Clock­work Quar­tet, or spe­cific­ally, its pro­du­cer: Edward Saperia, who’s also a part-time magician.

The Clock­work Quar­tet is a band which… no, that’s wrong, they are more than just a band. You could tell it by the unusual struc­ture: 14 musi­cians, play­ing everything from strings, ban­jos, musical saws, accor­di­ons to bass ban­jos, all of whom also take turns doing vocals — 4 are con­stant in each song, thus ‘quar­tet’. Not to men­tion a lot of people behind their lyr­ics, cos­tumes and dec­or­a­tions. Their genre is steam­punk, and their musical form is extraordin­ary: They tell stor­ies, reviv­ing the word ‘bardic’ that one could have thought was lost forever.

Gen­er­ally, we would have begun with their take on describ­ing their music, but why should we all bother read­ing text if the actual music is just two clicks away? And so, we move on to the first question:

Q: Cur­rently your songs are free, will that be the case in the future too?

A: Of course! We’re going to be selling mer­chand­ise, but everything that’s just inform­a­tion — like music, videos, art — we’ll be releas­ing under the creative-commons license.

Q: Have you exper­i­mented with other genres before going steampunk?

A: Lots of us are in other bands which are def­in­itely not steam­punk. For example, Jason (The Sci­ent­ist), Ash (The Engin­eer) and I are in the House of Strange; Emma (General’s Wife) is in the Irre­press­ibles.

Q: How did you dis­cover steam­punk for your­self then?

A: Well, it’s my fault really. I was into the look, clothes, and style and stuff — I was into it before I knew what it was called. But the music was not great. In fact, awful. So I thought — start a band! And dragged all the oth­ers along for the ride.

Q: What influ­enced your music?

A: Danny Elf­man, Stephen Sond­heim, Decem­ber­ists, Portishead… I mean, check our Face­book, it has a big list of influ­ences there. Also, we are just try­ing to evoke this gen­eric his­tor­ical period, make it sound ‘classy’ and acous­tic, not electronic.

Q: Why did you choose this uncom­mon storytelling style?

A: Because it’s awe­some! Not enough music has stor­ies in. Every­one loves stor­ies, but of course, they’re hard to write. I think there are two sorts of music: music that just con­veys an emo­tion, and music that tells a story. They’re like films — you don’t just put a film on in the back­ground, like you do a song, but story songs, you sit down and listen to. Songs are exper­i­ences. But people seem to just not make those anymore.

Q: How did you find each other, the whole band?

A:  I used to run parties called The Acid Jam, a big jam ses­sion thing. So I met a few through that. Also, I moved to this block, and Ash (The Engin­eer) lived down­stairs, and he is a pro­fes­sional music pro­du­cer. So he knew a bunch of people. And then, a few friends from the uni­ver­sity. When you have a pro­ject like this, which is going some­where, you know, has legs, it’s easy to find people.

Q: What musical edu­ca­tion did you go through?

A: I did grade 8 piano when I was young, I was in a few choirs while I was at school, and I spent a lot of time play­ing djembe when I was a teen­ager. I was a bit of a hip­pie. But I am by far the worst musi­cian in the band — we’ve got some really amaz­ing musi­cians! The Con­ductor is an incred­ible musi­cian, and the Fugit­ive, who taught him­self to play the accor­dion for the part. Emma (General’s Wife) teaches Suzuki cello and obvi­ously Ash (The Engin­eer) runs a stu­dio! The Doc­tor taught him­self the musical saw, plays oboe.

Q: Are you plan­ning on releas­ing a phys­ical CD?

A: Well, it turns out the press and stuff like phys­ical CDs, so we pressed a single, and I guess we’ll press the other music too. But really, I’m not a big fan of phys­ical CDs. The book we’ll release is the CD some­how, it’s got all the songs, with lyr­ics and melod­ies writ­ten out, and over 80 ori­ginal illustrations.

Q: Will it be avail­able to people from other coun­tries too?

A: Prob­ably. E-Commerce is some­thing we’ll fig­ure out as we go along. But that’s def­in­itely the plan any­way — most of our fans are overseas!

Q: What is the mer­chand­ise you men­tioned going to be?

A: We’ll be selling the book, and jew­elry, and other stuff. A card game! It’s still being designed, but it’s fun. It’s called ‘clock­wise’ — a game­play we inven­ted. It’s going to con­sist of 16 cards; quick to under­stand but with infin­ite stra­tegic pos­sib­il­it­ies. Well, not really infin­ite. But there’s noth­ing like it.

Q: Aren’t you wor­ried by that the steam­punk niche isn’t quite as pop­u­lar as oth­ers, like pop or rock?

A: Not really. We are doing this to make nice art, and because we dig steam­punk. Being pop­u­lar is just a bonus. I mean, hey, it’s nice, but what’s really great about it is that you can work with lots of cool people, and you get to meet a lot of nice people too.

Q: Just because this is an anime blog, do you have any rela tions to anime?

A: Steam­boy was cool, Laputa was cool. I heart Howl’s Mov­ing Castle. Ponyo was men­tal. Ash (The Engin­eer) is really into anime, but I don’t get much time because my job is long hours, but I like it. I’d love to do some Clock­work Quar­tet anime style art/animations. Ash (The Engin­eer) and Jason (The Sci­ent­ist) have been watch­ing Karas; I like Yakit­ate Japan; Emma (General’s Wife) likes Mega­tokyo and Battle Royale.

These are those who were present dur­ing our inter­view. From top left to bot­tom right: The Magi­cian, The Racon­teuse (wasn’t present after all), General’s Wife, The Scientist.

In Con­clu­sion

I want to thank the Clock­work Quar­tet for the inter­view; it was more than just a chat — it was enter­tain­ing. Some­times it’s amaz­ing to real­ise that artists are liv­ing people too, sym­path­etic and friendly.

I don’t want to imply that they are the all and everything of the musical part of steam­punk: Vari­ety is the key to everything in everything. But in con­trast to other artists whom you can loop through while you are work­ing, what they do is art. Where­with they become a must experience.