Great ambience

Groundbreaking bands such as Future Sound of London have been a big inspiration to RRQ. Future Sound are pioneers of live techno, broadcasting from their studio via ISDN digital phone links to clubs and radio networks in Europe and America. Equally influential are bands like Dead Can Dance which use ancient instruments and vocal styles.

"I see a lot of similarities between ancient music and techno," says Preston, the only member of RRQ who was actually reared in the rave scene. "In a lot of ways, music has come around full-circle. It was rhythmic, people would dance around a fire with masks..."

"And they took psychedelic drugs," interjects Johnson.
The whole rave scene has a long history of being aligned with ancient sounds, and it's quite interesting to see how a fascination with Javanese Gamelan music and Tibetan overtone singing can meld so well with techno loops. But unless they're playing a gig, don't expect to see any of the members of RRQ at your local rave.

"I never even listened to this kind of music until I started playing it," says Johnson. "[RRQ] is all about mystical sound, dance trance, but at the same time it's not as shallow as most dance music."

"We're trying to get past the point of 'I love everybody 'cause I'm on ecstasy' and dancing all night on drugs," adds Preston.

In fact, Leija refers to RRQ's music as "medicine" (in the Native American sense). "If we get locked into this deep vibe, people pick up on that," he says. "It can heal you or take you to some place other than where you are."

If that sounds transcendental, it's deliberate. For RRQ, and especially for Johnson, higher consciousness isn't just a groovy catchword, and tribal music isn't just a trendy thing: It's a steering philosophy for life. Johnson, for example, drinks his own urine daily as part of a natural body-conditioning regimen and works for the vegetarian Hare Krishna restaurant Kalachandji's. He also practices sound and energy healing.

At the age of 12, Johnson's mother, a psychologist, sent him to a progressive local physician who prescribed Kundalini yoga to treat hypertension. When he was 16, Johnson then went to New Guinea, where he experienced the cumulative series of events that would set in motion not only Sofa Kingdom and RRQ, but his whole life. Living in Papua and working on the construction of a bridge for native tribesmen as part of a Christian evangelical mission, Johnson got a real taste of mythology and rare musical instruments. On the plane trip home, he had his first hallucinatory experience as a result of a rare allergic reaction to cold medicine.

"I was sitting in my seat, and I noticed there were some ants crawling on my legs," he recalls. "At first I didn't think it was unusual that ants would be in an airplane, but then I saw hundreds of ants crawling all over me, and I stood up screaming 'aahhh!' It lasted several hours."

By comparison, keyboard and lap steel player Randy Murphy seems a bit out of place. He's a quiet, fairly normal sort of guy who owns a frame shop downtown, yet shares a love of collecting rare instruments. "Every other band I've been in," he says, "I just got bored really quickly. But with these guys I rarely play the same thing twice, and I'm constantly playing new instruments that I don't even really know how to play."

"Since we improvise a lot and use natural instruments, we're on the organic side of techno," says Leija, "but we're on the techno side of organic." Improvisation cuts two ways, though. One of the downfalls of RRQ is their propensity to get lost in a muddle of ambience that's sort of like idle conversation; yet they can keep ravers' attention for long periods of time, as they did at the Dallas Music Complex on Halloween night.

Still, it's hard to forget Sofa Kingdom. And RRQ's cover of Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears" touches on a bit of the old style by employing the same deep voice of irony that once bellowed--both seriously and sarcastically--the title of Sofa Kingdom's "That's What You Get for Getting Stoned!" in much the same spirit as Beck's mumbling "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?"

Johnson is quick to distance himself from his former project, however. At its heart, Sofa Kingdom was a spectacle of anarchy that featured as many as 15 people on stage--many of whom appeared to just wander up and begin playing an instrument.

"Sofa Kingdom was about the contradiction of rock 'n'roll," says Johnson. "It was about the pretentiousness and conceit. It was a joke, but at the same time it was completely serious. We're not being sarcastic at all when we do Roshonnda Red Quotet--and it's more fun than sarcasm."

Roshonnda Red Quotet plays Grinder's Friday December 27.