artistsGet to know Qrion, the artist bringing soulful samples to digital-age sounds

Anyone with the ability to turn the default iPhone ringtone into something other than a chronically annoying sound has to be given some credit. The track in question is ‘iPhone Bubbling’, on which the distinctive ringtone becomes an irresistible, trap-tinged rhythmic workout. It also brought Qrion (pronounced ‘Korean’) to wider attention, and won her an invite to play in San Francisco, the city she now calls home.

“I played the track at a show about five years ago,” explains 23-year-old MoMiji Tsukada, “and the show got put on YouTube. It was the first time I began to realise I had fans elsewhere.”

Growing up on the Japanese island of Sapporo, an hour’s flight from Tokyo, Qrion’s early introduction to music came via her late father, who played in a band and taught her to play a few chords on the piano as an infant. “It was mostly classical and orchestral stuff,” she explains.

It was also her dad who got her to think like a producer, after introducing her to basic music production software in her teens.

“That was when I first started to think about kick drums and hi-hats and how you can build all these layers,” she says.

When most of her friends were frequenting shopping malls and arcades in Japan, Qrion was holed up in her bedroom obsessing over leftfield Japanese producers like Dé Dé Mouse. Putting to use the production skills her father had passed on, she started working on her own tunes and quickly built a following on SoundCloud, before venturing out to DJ in her home town.

She played her first gigs at 18. “Everyone just focused on my age because I was still in high school,” she says. “Now they focus on my music.”

Now settled in San Francisco, the softly spoken producer has become an affiliate of Skrillex’s Nest HQ. She says that with its mountainous terrain her new home “doesn’t feel dissimilar to Sapporo”.

“I’m lucky in lots of ways, because most Asian parents want their children to stay home and get a good job like being a doctor or a lawyer,” she explains. “But mine were like, ‘Go ahead, enjoy yourself!’”

Qrion is part of Mixmag and WAV’s new Magnified team. For more info, go to wav.mixmag.net

Valerie Lee is Mixmag's US Digital Editor, follow her on Twitter