A Jedi He Will Be

While he's considered one of the world's top DJs, DJ Yoda, aka Duncan Beiny, is anything but content to rest on his considerable laurels. Constant innovation and reinvention has been a marker of his long career, evidenced by releases including singles, albums, games, mix CDs, vinyl and cassettes. Yoda's latest album, Chop Suey, is also proof of his ability to constantly excite, as is the cutting edge mix of visual mash ups that make his live shows a distinct blend of clubbing and going out to the movies. Bringing his two favourite activities together in his art, claims Yoda, has always been on his mind, even before he had the ability to do so.

“I guess they're my two loves: DJing and movies,” he says. “Before the technology existed that allowed me to do all this mixing with video, I was always using audio samples from movies in my audio mix: throwing in little quotes from Star Wars or Scarface or whatever. And I was doing some things where I was re-soundtracking movies I loved. So I would do shows in cinemas where they would show these films where I was playing my own DJ set on top of the movie. Then the technology evolved that allowed me to use actual clips from the movies as part of my DJ set, so it just made perfect sense.”

Talking of technology, it's not been a great amount of time since it became available. As such, we're talking a reasonably new field when it comes to visual DJing. Not surprisingly, Yoda, existing as he does on the cutting edge of the art form, says these are stimulating times indeed. “It's very fast moving,” he continues. “Every year new things come out that allow people to do different things. It's a really exciting thing. At this stage, there are so many different ways of doing it that everyone kind of has their own spin on it and everyone's doing something unique. At some stage there might be a sort of industry standard where everyone starts copying everyone else and it gets really stale, but right now, everyone working with visuals in clubs is doing something totally different.”

And what exactly does a DJ Yoda show look like? It appears as if he performs two distinct styles of show: DJ and AV. As with a lot of avant-garde concepts – in this case relating to his second type of performance – it's not all that simple to convey. Having said that, recognition of things we didn't know we knew has long been a tradition in groundbreaking art forms, and Yoda's AV sets are no exception.

“The DJ shows are like you might expect: just a regular DJ set,” he says. “With the AV shows, what I'm doing is I'm scratching and mixing various different videos as well as the music at the same time. So I'm mixing in movies that I like or YouTube stuff that I think is cool or just anything I think is cool. It's one of those things that's quite hard to explain, but if you go onto YouTube and have a look or come to a show for a minute you're like, 'Oh, okay, I get it'.”

With its long and proud rock'n'roll history, St Kilda's Espy is not necessarily the first place that comes to mind when thinking about going to see a world class DJ. As Yoda points out, though, punters at the venue are reasonably broad-minded, and it's obvious he has a great affection for the place. “I've played there a few times, actually, and I think it's a really amazing place,” he says. “It's quite unique for an Australian venue because it's got more character than your average Australian club – a bit more soul and history. There's a really good vibe there as far as the audience goes. They seem really open to anything that's good music, really.”

DJ Yoda will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 26 January - The Esplanade Hotel, St Kilda VIC
Friday 1 February - Regrooved, Byron Bay NSW
Saturday 2 February - Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst NSW
Saturday 9 February - The Ivy, Sydney NSW