With a cinematic approach to the construction of her otherworldly productions, Brooklyn-based QRTR – aka Meagan Rodriguez – has garnered rising acclaim for the ethereal pulse of debut LP Drenched, and for her euphoric DJ sets

>Awash with lavish synth textures, mangled ghostly vocals and head-bobbing house beats, QRTR’s debut album Drenched is certainly among the most characterful debuts we’ve spun recently. Built using a sound design ethos that resulted from years of professional study, merged with a love of transcendent house music, Meagan Rodriguez’s electronic alter-ego has carved a beguiling sonic identity.

The three main facets of her life as QRTR – that of sound designer, gigging DJ and an experimental electronic artist – are all integral to her approach to making tracks that skirt around the dance music genre, while still diving headfirst into its tropes if she feels the need… Examples of which include the trance-like movement of the hypnotic You Won’t Return, or the lo-fi synth stammers of My Bad.

Making up for lost time after 2020’s Covid restrictions with a full schedule of live shows, we spoke to Meagan the morning after a particularly exuberant set, to share her story, talk tech and explain more about her process.

Live to studio

cm: Hi Meagan, firstly can you give us a bit of background on yourself and how you first started music-making?

MR: “I’ve loved music my whole life; I did music classes growing up in elementary school, and though I never specialised, I always loved it. My parents really encouraged it, too; they’d buy me different instruments every Christmas. They knew it brought me joy. Really, I didn’t start producing music until I was in middle school. My Dad bought me a Sony VAIO tower PC. It came with a bunch of Sony creative software. I used the early version of Acid as my main music software, and I’d sample things using a little PlayStation 2 microphone!

“I’d sample noises that I made myself, or even songs that I heard on the radio. I would then mess with the frequencies and the EQ to remove the vocals from the track so that I could add my own in. I was only 11 at this point, so I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it was fun. I’d burn CDs of me singing on top of tracks and force them on my friends on the school bus.

“I got my first MacBook in high school which had GarageBand, and I started making a few tracks in that. I never considered making music in any kind of career capacity. I actually ended up going to film school and focused on postproduction. There I studied sound design and have been working in that capacity for ten years, and I still do some work in that domain. I’m still occasionally called on for music editing and music supervision jobs. It wasn’t until around 2014 that I started going to my first music festivals and dived into the nightlife of New York City. DJing was just a hobby at first.