Today we’d like to introduce you to NeoQor.
Hi NeoQor, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
To start, I grew up with electronic music being a major part of my life. It was a part of many different aspects of my environment as a kid growing up in the late 90s and 2000s, from listening to it on the radio (back when Dallas actually had a dedicated dance station) to playing rhythm games, and eventually going to raves and clubs as I got older.
The more raves and club nights I went to as a teenager and young adult, the more I noticed how much fun the DJs appeared to be having. The music was a huge part of my life at this point, and the DJs’ energy was contagious, and I thought to myself that it would be fun to one day be that guy on stage having the time of his life while rocking a crowd.
From there, I started learning DJing, which was incredibly fun, but eventually, just playing and listening to the music was no longer enough. I had my own ideas for the things I wanted to hear, and I figured the best way to ensure that the songs I wanted to hear would actually exist would be to learn how to make them myself.
Only a few months after learning how to DJ, I got a copy of FL Studio and started learning to produce music, and that became my true obsession, overshadowing DJing by a long shot. I started learning music production in early 2012, and although it was a very slow process of trial and error at first, balancing it with work and school, I spent as much of my spare time as possible trying, failing, learning, and improving.
I started releasing music in 2016 under the name NeoQor, and have continued doing so all the way up to today. I eventually reached a point where I feel very confident in my ability to explore creatively and bring my ideas to life. As a result of my work over the last decade, I have had a lot of great experiences and opportunities, including some really big shows and making music with one of my all-time favorite artists. I don’t ever intend to stop, and I’m looking forward to even more awesome creative projects and experiences to come.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It absolutely has not been a smooth road. I have certainly made mistakes and taken some Ls along the way –far too many to list them all.
One major challenge I can think of is becoming proficient in music production to begin with. In the beginning, much of your time learning to produce music is spent in what is referred to on the Dunning-Kruger curve as the “Valley of Despair”. At this stage, you have such grand ideas in your head, but there’s a massive gap between how awesome the ideas seem and your current ability as a producer to realize them (and the funny thing is, later on as you mature as an artist, you realize that a lot of those seemingly great ideas you once had are actually really pretty cringe or trash, and you end up working on different ones anyway🤣).
There’s a lot of frustration in that valley, and you will wonder if you’ll ever reach the point where anything you make sounds good to you for longer than just a few minutes. You’ll wonder if there will ever be a time when you will finish a track and not hate it. You’ll watch tutorials and videos of other, more experienced producers making it seem so easy to make mind-bendingly cool-sounding shit and wonder how they ever got to that point, and if/when you ever will. Getting past that stage took up a significant chunk of time in my journey and was a major obstacle for a while. Now, however, I can wholeheartedly say it was worth persisting.
That said, even now, I’m still learning and discovering things that are unlocking new levels in the quality of my productions. As an example, I had a significant breakthrough in my mixing and mastering process earlier this year, which took the loudness and quality of my mixdowns and masters far beyond what I had been able to do before. It was a level I’d been trying to reach for a while now, but until recently, I’d only ever come kind of close. So I’m still figuring things out and overcoming challenges as I work, but the obstacles I face now are more like minor speed bumps compared to the major roadblocks I encountered at the beginning of the learning curve.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I make and play what I like to refer to as “extreme rave music” under the name NeoQor. If it’s hard, fast, electronic music with an aggressive or silly vibe, chances are I make it and play it in my sets (think hardcore/gabber, drum ‘n’ bass, jungle, hard techno, hardstyle, etc.). I use the umbrella term “extreme rave music” because I can’t stick to one subgenre or microgenre, as is common practice for a lot of brands and artists out there.
So, the irony of my speciality is that my speciality is variety. My back catalog has grown into an amalgamation of all the influences that inspire me, and it just so happens that a lot of my musical influences are harder, faster, more energetic, and more aggressive forms of electronic music.
I used to be afraid that I was too all over the place, but over time I realized that all the music I make and all the sounds that inspire me are what make up NeoQor as a whole. Although there is a lot of variance in style and subgenre from track to track, I think there is a common thread that emerges in all of the work. So, I ultimately decided to embrace the variety and chaos that is my body of work and lean harder into exploring all of my different influences and inspirations with each new project.
I am proud of this variety because I think, when it comes to ravers and extreme music lovers, there’s a little something in my catalog for everyone. I don’t need to please everyone, but I’m proud of the fact that my back catalog and sets have some range and, I think, are thus a little more accessible across a broader spectrum of listeners, especially when compared to, say, someone who might make exclusively hard techno or exclusively uptempo, for example.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
A fat-ass gabber kick drum…
If you have heard one, then you already understand.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://neoqor.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialneoqor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialneoqor
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/officialneoqor
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/officialneoqor
- Other: https://neoqor.bandcamp.com/music
Image Credits
Austin Mathis
