Imagine one of those talking heads shows fronted by Bert Newton where they countdown something like the top 20 movie catchphrases from the ’80s accompanied by ‘hilarious’ comments from Z-list celebrities who seem to be an authority on everything. Now throw in some upfront hip hop tracks, some guilty pleasure pop tunes, a smattering of TV themes and a good dose of scratching, cutting and expert mixing. This is the sound of DJ Yoda. The shows of Duncan Beiny (as he’s otherwise known) are unlike any other DJ on the planet. One night you could hear the theme tune from M*A*S*H over some block-party beats or the dialogue from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off synced into an ’80s soft-rock anthem. You just never know what to expect. However, this style wasn’t really something he developed consciously.
“I didn’t deliberately set out to do that but now that’s the way I’m very happy about it,” he explains over the phone during a break in his two month tour around these parts. “I’ve watched different trends in dance music and DJing come and go and I just feel very happy to watch it and be no part of it whatsoever. It’s served me pretty well to be true to what I love when I DJ. I’m very honest about the stuff that I like, even if other people might consider it sometimes not cool to be playing country and western music or ‘80s music or whatever. I just play what I like and stay honest to myself and I think that automatically sets a DJ apart from anyone else.”
After leaving university in the ’90s, Beiny started to produce mixtapes containing this mish-mash of genres that took his fancy and the popularity of these grew so much that he was asked by Antidote Records to produce an official version, which was released as How To Cut & Paste Mix Tape Vol.1. Another volume has since been released along with an ’80s, a ’30s and a country and western version and so the legacy of Yoda began, where any track or sample is ripe to be played but is there anything he would never play?
“I would never say never,” he cheekily replies. “I remember reading this quote from DJ Q-Bert when I was growing up, he said, ‘If you give me any record I’ll find a way to flip it, it can be an opera record or whatever I’ll find a way to make it work’. I find that really inspiring. I love the idea that you can take any sound and make something cool out of it, so I would never say never.”
Another feature of a Yoda performance is the speed at which everything happens – tracks and references appear and disappear within seconds, constantly keeping the audience on their toes. “That comes down to just having a short attention span,” he explains. “A lot of the time when I DJ, I only have an hour and a half to play and there’s too much good music in the world. So I’m like, ‘This song’s cool, how about this one and how about this one?’. I also think that as a guest DJ especially in somewhere like Australia where I’ve flown all the way across the world to come here, it seems to be a waste to stand there and let a record play for five minutes. I’m all the way over here because I wanna bring something to the mix that you couldn’t just have anyone do; I wanna mix stuff up, make it interesting in a way that a computer couldn’t do.”
It’s this sort of energy and fun that Beiny has brought to his second record Chop Suey. Just one look at the track-list with titles such as Charlie Sheen, Sega RIP and Big Trouble In Little China is evidence enough that he’s managed to transfer the madcap nature of his sets to CD format. “I worked with different vocalists on every song on the album, so there’s a whole bunch of people on there, a really eclectic mix of rappers and singers,” he says. “I wanted the lineup of vocalists on the album to be really representative of my music taste. So you have stuff on there that’s representing music that I listened to as a kid in the ’80s like Boy George and Mike Winslow (the sound effects guy) from the Police Academy movies and then you have stuff on there that represents the ‘90s rap music I used to love, people like M.O.P. and Greg Nice from Nice & Smooth. And then you have this new generation of music that I like, people are who the future of music for me, like Action Bronson – one of the best rappers out now and Sway – one of my favourites from the UK. There’s all these different people on there and it hopefully all comes together and represents the sound that I’m all about.”
With his second visit to our shores this summer just around the corner, Beiny has been working out what extra treats he can bring forth to keep things as unique as ever but he’s rather coy as to what they are when quizzed. “I don’t want to give it away as it will ruin the surprise,” he concludes. Can’t wait.
BY ANDREW NELSON
