John Eden meets Olaf Karnik across the decks

Olaf is a reggae writer and fan outta Cologne. We previously interviewed each other for the Audio Poverty programme. We also played some tunes to close the festival. They laid on a great soundsystem for us. We were preceded by Quarta 330, a really cool Japanese guy who fiddled with a load of gameboys to produce this whacked out wall of digi noise that I really liked. He gets lumped in with dubstep because he’s had a record out on Hyperdub, but (as with Hyperdub artists in general) he has a load of different stuff going on and has obviously been influenced by a bunch of different stuff. My set was the usual combination of UK MC classics and JA bizness, with the odd bit of dodgy mixing I am afraid. Only 45 minutes too because I wanted to stop hogging the stage (out of everyone at the festival I was the only person with 3 slots, heh heh). The plan was for me to return and do a second set later but Olaf was doing pretty great, so the free beer beckoned… Also see this page on the Audio Poverty site for mp3 sets from DJ Rupture, Awesometapesfromafrica and Quarta 330 alongside a lot of even stranger sonic and spoken word material. Get stuck in! Shamefully, I managed to miss Martin’s conference debut at Goldsmiths recently, but he has kindly written it up over at Beyond The Implode, complete with scans of a rare as hen’s teeth Ninjaman record.