This Wednesday, August 15th, one of S.F.’s best happy hours returns to Harlot. Qoöl will feature William Wardlaw, Mossmoss, and Spesh playing the best in techno, house, and minimal. We catch up with resident Spesh about where Qoöl has been and what to expect at upcoming happy hours.

What have the Qoöl DJs been up to?

I have been playing around SF, doing the A&R duties at Loöq Records, and producing tracks as well as the Loöq Radio show with Jondi, so not much has changed for me. Same for Jondi who has been my faithful co-pilot at Loöq Records and Qoöl. He has also been writing an excellent blog, and producing multiple music projects including Momu (with one of Qoöl’s original DJs, Mark Musselman) who just happen to have an new album in the Beatport Top 100 at the moment. Marc Kate has taken a break from DJing and runs an excellent label of his own called Untitled And After, and Scott Carrelli is now a resident with SF’s excellent WERD crew. Gil and Hyper D have not been DJing lately, but who knows, they may just pop back onto the scene at some point!

What made you decide to bring it back?

The time is right! Qoöl parties have been held in downtown SF during the good times as well as the bad. Our humble beginnings were just prior to the 1st dot com boom. We rode that wave, survived the bust and even grew after that, but the mood somehow changed after the recession of ’08. Folks either left downtown or just got serious and stopped going out so we decided to hit the pause button on Qoöl and wait it out. Fast forward to 2012 and you can feel the optimism and energy in the air again. People are back downtown and ready to rock after work, and so is Qoöl!

Is it going to be the same or are you guys approaching it different?

The essence of Qoöl will remain exactly the same. The doors will open at 5pm, all are welcome, and everyone will be treated to amazing DJs and full-on clubbing experience that lasts ’till the lights go up just before 10pm. And we’re still in the the heart of downtown. The only real change we’re making to the original formula is longer sets for the DJs. Set times originally used to be just 45 minutes each, and though really short, that seemed to work at our last location. But Harlot is one of those spaces where DJs can really work a crowd and we really want to let that happen if we can.

Qoöl takes place every Wednesday at Harlot from 5-10pm.

• Tag: Interviews