The Smirnoff Experience with DJ Yoda
DJ Yoda (pictured) is playing at a secret location somewhere in Sydney tonight - and he says it's going to be his best show ever. Read our interview here and tune in tomorrow for our exclusive slideshow of pictures from the Smirnoff event.
The art of scratching records has been around for a good few decades and has slowly but surely risen to universal acceptance amongst the musical community. Of course, just when everybody had gotten comfortable, something would have to come along and shake everything up.
In this instance, it's the Pioneer DVJ 1000, a DJ mixing platform that combines both audio and video. It's the product of years of research and collaboration between leading club DJs and the Pioneer Corporation, and only a few DJs worldwide have access to this technology. Thankfully, one of them is heading to Australia this week. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome DJ Yoda.
UK native Duncan Beiny got his start behind the decks during a stint at university, playing at a hip-hop and soul night while he worked towards earning a degree in English and American literature. Post-education he began producing mixtapes, eventually catching the attention of Antidote Records who commissioned an official mixtape, How To Cut & Paste Mix Tape, Vol. 1, in 2001. He hasn't looked back since, releasing influential mixtapes and his own solo album, playing his way through clubs around the world and leaving crowds sweaty and tired with his genre-blending hip-hop DJ sets. When Pioneer needed help developing its line of DJ equipment, Yoda was a natural choice: "I worked with Pioneer for few years on some DJ mixers. I guess they are always looking for feedback from DJs that actually use the equipment week-in-week-out, as opposed to people who sit in a boardroom and try to figure out what would work."
After Pioneer developed their DVJ range, Yoda once again stepped in to help out, and a more perfect match could not be found. Even when he worked purely with sound, Yoda would pepper his sets with snippets of audio culled from his favourite movies: "Before the opportunity was there to work with videos my DJ sets would always include audio samples from movies. I would throw in little quotes from Star Wars or Ferris
Bueller's Day Off or anything that
I thought was cool. As soon as the technology came out that meant I could use the actual movies themselves to scratch and mix with, I jumped straight on it [because] it suited my style so well."
In much the same way that DJs dig through crates of records looking for beats and breaks, Yoda keeps one eye firmly focussed on television and movies: "Any time anything came on TV that I thought was cool I would hit record straight away, it's always been my mindset whether it's music or watching movies I'm always thinking if it would work in a DJ show."
In doing so, Yoda has created a whole new style of performance, one that blends musicality, pop culture, humour and art into something that is both entertaining to watch and dance along with. He has played alongside Steve Martin, Dave Chapelle and Chris Rock at the HBO Comedy Festival in Las Vegas, performed with the likes of Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson and Fatboy Slim, and even headlined at the Star Wars premiere in Monte Carlo, scratching up footage from the movies in front of George Lucas himself. On top of this, he has been touring his Magic Cinema show for the last year or so, pushing the boundaries of this new technology while simultaneously getting comfortable with it. It's what he is bringing to the Smirnoff Experience, and he is confident that all the practice has paid off for us.
"This time round I really feel like I've nailed it. It was a real trial and error finding out what works in a club or a festival. You have to remember that people are not always going to concentrate on the screen 100 per cent, they're there to dance and have fun, they're going to want to talk to each other and it's not like a cinema where everyone is quiet and stares at the screen. It takes some working out, and I'm proud of the show that I'm bringing to Australia for the Smirnoff Experience."
DJ Yoda is headlining the Smirnoff Experience at a Secret location in Sydney tonight! Read our review of the event in our clubs section tomorrow.
Watch for a sneak peak at some of what you might see tonight if you can find the Experience.