DJ Yoda’s last album, Chop Suey, was a mix-mashed culture clash of Hip-Hop, Dance, D&B, Funk and everything in between, hence the title as he explains: “The dish of chop suey was something Chinese immigrants coming to America came up with – the idea was to basically just throw in all the ingredients available at the time and come up with the best thing possible. I thought that was a really similar philosophy to my way of making music.”
But creating random noise is easy, the hard part is pulling it all together, giving it the right seasoning, getting your timings right, and before you even get to all of that, you also need a good starting point. For DJ Yoda it’s a sample that he connects with, “It can be anything – whether it be audio or visual – then I build on top of that until something new happens,” he says.
If you’ve never witnessed a DJ Yoda Audio/Visual set, it’s a unique experience, when I first saw him live, I thought to myself “This guy has to be on some REALLY good drugs medication or be an autistic savant to come up with this stuff” – I asked him – which is it? [He laughed out loud] “I’m not sure that it’s either! But I do think that everyone is somewhere on the autistic spectrum and a good DJ should be slightly further along than your average person. You need that urge to collect, compile and organise, to really know your music.
This guy has to be on some REALLY good medication or be an autistic savant to come up with this stuff!”
As for his next big project, DJ Yoda says it’s still “very early days” so it’s too early to say exactly what the flavour will be this time around, but he described what he’s got so far as definitely more “straight hip-hop” than “Chop Suey”.
Expect some surprises and a host of never-before-seen A/V material at DJ Yoda’s upcoming Soundcrash music show, also featuring DJ Woody and DJ Cheeba, on November 1st.
Tickets are cheap and well worth it, info and tix here: http://bit.ly/18nc3fb
