Has Landed

Ego is a product of his times. More than that, he seems to be vaguely ahead of them. A hybrid VJ and producer, Ego's iconoclastic output spans across psychedelic visual art, razor-sharp hip hop DJing and creative video and audio production. There are a handful of artists working in a similar arena (most famously Brisbane VJ pioneer Sampology) but Ego takes matters further than any of his peers.

“Well, I'm super heavily inspired by guys like Sampology and DJ Yoda overseas. I definitely think Sampology has paved the way for me and a lot of other guys around the world to really get their head around what's possible,” the VJ says. “I guess, for me, I kind of had a choice – I could either be a B-grade Sampology or I could try and do something different. So, I've tried to really push the visual side of what I do.”

Ego's shows are mindbogglingly complex. From a live standpoint, it seems relatively straightforward. The Sydneysider simply DJs in Serato with a standard video plug-in. However, an astonishing amount of preparation goes down long before a set hits the club. His current tour, for example, boasts a production that apparently took a solid six months to assemble.

“Pretty much, yeah,” he admits. “Everything I do takes time. That's the thing with video – it doesn't happen overnight. Some clips took me a couple of weeks to do. One of the clips I did samples of a lot of old magazines and textbooks and found footage. All animated and thrown together. The whole process of that took a long time. Scouring op shops for material to edit, bringing it all together.

“Like I said, I've tried to bring out the visual artist part of me a bit more. I've tried to bring out a distinct style and flavour that was my own. You know, one that couldn't have come from your DJ Yodas or Sampologys. I use the full Adobe suite. I cut out images and collect still images in Photoshop, I use Adobe Premiere to cut video together. I spend most of my time in After Effects, doing animation and stuff.”

It's Ego's unilateral approach that puts him ahead of the curve. He's not just a DJ with a facility for chopping up video. He's as much a visual artist as he is a music producer as he is a DJ. There's really very little precedent for his kind of artist. He's just recently signed to Modular Recordings but is still in the process of figuring out exactly what his medium is – he'll be releasing an EP, but there has to be more to it.

“It's a good question,” he laughs. “I'm working on an EP, at the moment. A sample-based video EP. That will be released in both an audio version and a visual version – on Vimeo and YouTube and pushed to radio as well. All of the conventional channels like iTunes. I suppose that's a bit of an ideal release for what I do, at the moment. Other than that, I don't know. It's kind of the beauty of this craft that it is quite temporary.

“Or quite hard for people to get their head around,” he clarifies. “They don't always know how to approach it. You know, it's not something that people can just figure out and download or buy or listen to it on the radio. It doesn't have an obvious home. I like the idea of doing a DVD but I don't know who would watch it. I really think the best way to experience it is to come to a show.”