FSQ is a US-based collective of musicians, producers, and DJs led by Chuck ‘Da Fonk’ Fishman, alongside long-time collaborators G Koop, One Era, Morgan Wiley, and Tate Masimore.
Photo credit: FSQ – Official
Drawing from funk, disco, and club culture, the group bridges live instrumentation with studio-driven production, developing a catalog shaped by collaboration and a strong focus on musical detail.
Formed through years of shared work across touring, recording, and label activity, FSQ has built its identity around process and musicianship, with releases spanning Soul Clap Records and beyond. Their output reflects a balance between structured songwriting and open-ended studio experimentation.
Their latest release sees Prins Thomas reworking ‘Feeling Wide’, a collaboration with Moniquea and XL Middleton, extending the track’s sonic palette while preserving its core elements.
In this conversation, Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ reflects on the making of the track, their creative approach, and the ideas shaping their next chapter.
EG: Hi, guys! Welcome to EG. It’s a pleasure to have you here with us. How have you been doing?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: Thank you! Everybody is doing their thing – we are all jamming. I know Morgan Wiley (keyboardist/engineer) out in New York City has his hands full with projects like working with Natasha Diggs. Matt Coogan (aka One Era, multi-instrumentalist) is working on some solo stuff, and Tate Masimore (f.k.a. Chas Bronz) has been performing and recording with PillowTalk. G Koop is constantly producing for other artists; if you look at his songwriter page on Spotify, you’ll see his recent work for Future and Metro Boomin’ – I think he got yet another Grammy nomination for that one. Me, Chuck Da Fonk, I’m out in San Francisco, working on wrapping up the next FSQ album and label managing Soul Clap Records.
EG: First of all, congratulations on the release of Prins Thomas’ remix of your 2025 single, ‘Feeling Wide’! You must be excited to have this one out. What has the initial reception been like so far?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: I’m thankful for early radio support from Colleen Cosmo Murphy from Balearic Breakfast and Bill Brewster on NTS. Bill Brewster said the ‘Feeling Wide’ Diskomiks is Prins Thomas’ best in years. I love everything Prins Thomas does, so it would be hard for me to say that, but Bill said it, so wow. I was just reviewing the DJ promo feedback – I never know if I should name drop the names, but I am absolutely chuffed by the list and specific comments they made.
EG: How would you describe these new versions? What made you think of Prins Thomas as the ideal producer to rework ‘Feeling Wide’?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: When I heard the finished version of ‘Feeling Wide’ – it took a lot to get it mixed properly and sounding just like I wanted it – I knew Prins Thomas could take this track to the next level – he would be perfect match as he is the king of analog funky space disco, which is the territory where the original version went, but what if it could go even further into that sonically? What Prins Thomas turned in far exceeded my expectations. There are so many little things in his Diskomiks versions, for example, how he was able to make more use of G Koop’s ukulele part, which has such a tiny feature in the original. The layers of arpeggiated synths Prins added and extra percussion, like tambourines – wow, every time I listen to these Diskomiks versions, I hear new stuff. Prins also really made such great use of the original parts – it’s very hard to mix this stuff since it’s so musically dense to begin with.
EG: The original version of this track saw you linking up with Moniquea and XL Middleton. How did that connection come about, and what was the recording process like?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: EMPIRE, our music distributor and label services company for Soul Clap Records, has an incredible recording studio here in San Francisco. EMPIRE offers their artists and labels writing camp opportunities and the use of the studio. So, in May of 2024, Soul Clap Records was offered a writing camp there, so we brought XL and Moniquea up from Los Angeles to participate. They wound up making another track with Soul Clap, called ‘Brand New,’ which was released on the EP compilation ‘Soul Clap Records vs MoFunk’.
For ‘Feeling Wide,’ I had recorded a lot of the synth parts in Florida with FSQ’s Tate Masimore, but I felt my playing wasn’t as sharp as it could be – I don’t snap things to a grid in Ableton or anything like that. We are moving to a world where everything lacks swing and is on the 4/4 because you can play kind of sloppy and then just make it right on the grid in your digital audio workstation. Instead of doing that with my parts on ‘Feeling Wide’ at EMPIRE Studios, I had XL retrack a lot of my parts with the exact same synth sounds to get that swing, real organic playing. Then XL put a really stellar new synth solo on the end of ‘Feeling Wide,’ which I think inspired Prins Thomas to do his own solo on his Diskomiks.
Moniquea recorded the vocals for the bridge chorus on ‘Feeling Wide’ at EMPIRE in 2024, but I still wasn’t feeling I had the lyrics for the verses totally nailed when we were together. I knew the sentiment of the verses, but maybe I didn’t have the exact words I needed yet. I sent her the full lyrics in early 2025, and she recorded those in Los Angeles without me in the studio with her. It’s an incredible achievement that she was able to phrase the lyrics in rhythm with the music and come up with her own melodic fit for her supremely expressive singing. I sing along with Moniquea every time I hear ‘Feeling Wide’ – she took my lyrics and ran with them. It’s a deeply personal song, so the fact that she was able to nail it really means so much to me. I can never thank her enough.
“I’d like to see more artists focusing on the business side of music, and less on social media”
EG: How do you feel about the track now that it’s been out for a while? What is your relationship with your releases and the passage of time like?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: (Laughter) Why rush rush. I remember playing the chords for this song for my girlfriend, now my wife, in 2010. I recorded a version of this song, titled ‘Try So Hard,’ with a full Caribbean disco band in Barbados in 2011, but it didn’t sound the way I wanted it to. So I kept playing the song, hoping I would have the chance to record it, which I finally did in 2023. By early 2025, the track was finished, but we wrestled with getting it mixed properly until we brought in Joe Caserta, an incredibly talented mixing engineer and producer. Sometimes it takes a long time to bake a track. Then you have Prins Thomas, who we told to take his time with it – we even went back to him and asked for his Diskodubb version because the Diskomiks was so great – so then we had to wait a few more months for that.
The emotions in ‘Feeling Wide’ I still relate to, but there will come a time when it will be more of a time capsule, and I will think to myself, “Oh yeah, I remember when I felt like that” – it becomes more of a capture of a memory in a song. A lot of the songs on the FSQ album ‘Reprise Tonight’ (Soul Clap Records, 2020) have a real nostalgic feeling for me because I wrote them at a particular time in my life when I was going through a divorce and partying heavily, and they are written from that viewpoint, and I’m obviously not there anymore. The FSQ track ’11:00 AM’ with legendary vocalist Fonda Rae is about my partner in FSQ and me, Sa’d ‘The Hourchild’ Ali (he passed away in 2018), coming home from a Soul Clap Halloween party in 2013. ’11:00 AM’ doesn’t sound super specific to the listener, but it really is specific to me – a perfect example of this “time capsule” idea.
EG: Speaking about connections, how did FSQ come about? Was the idea for FSQ “always there”, or was it something that “just happened”?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: It was a few years in the making – the genesis is in the early 2000s. I had been making pretty traditional live jazz-funk music with a group called fONKSQUISh, but I was hearing something new coming out of emerging record labels like Bastard Jazz and Tru-Thoughts, and realized I needed to move more towards these types of sounds – dance music inspired by funk. I was living in Philadelphia at the time when Diplo and his partner Low Budget were throwing Hollertronix parties, and that influenced me a lot.
In the mid-1990s, I toured with George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, but after that, I wasn’t really in club culture. It took a few years to build FSQ into a proper production team, with G Koop as the first member. The name came later, around 2012.
Sa’d “The Hourchild” Ali also became a key part of the project, bringing a strong DJ background. What really solidified FSQ was working with Soul Clap and helping connect projects with George Clinton and Sly Stone.
EG: On to a broader subject… what would you like to accomplish this year?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: Without Sa’d here, I’ve been DJing solo and expanding what an FSQ set is. I want to bring that energy to more places globally. The goal is to find the right structure to tour more consistently.
We’re also finishing the next album, ‘Nightlife Geography’, which includes ‘Feeling Wide’ and new collaborations.
“A lot of the songs on the FSQ album ‘Reprise Tonight’ (Soul Clap Records, 2020) have a real nostalgic feeling for me because I wrote them at a particular time in my life when I was going through a divorce and partying heavily”
EG: What are some of the challenges artists will face in the near future?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: Make sure you copyright everything and register your publishing. If you don’t, you risk losing control of your work. AI is also creating new challenges in protecting music.
I’d like to see more artists focusing on the business side of music, and less on social media.
EG: What’s next for FSQ? Where can your fans catch you next?
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: We have an open-to-close DJ set at Phonobar in San Francisco on May 22nd. Please come through, 8 PM to 2 AM.
EG: Thank you so much for your time!
Chuck Da Fonk from FSQ: We are thankful for Electronic Groove’s support over the years. One of our first features was an EG mix back in 2014, and it’s still up on SoundCloud.
EG: We remember that one, great mix. You are always welcome!
FSQ’s ‘Feeling Wide’ is out now on Soul Clap Records. Stream and download here.
