A VOLCANO somewhere in Iceland made it look unlikely that he was going to make it.

But, a couple of hours on the boat and a bit of sea- sickness later, the most down-to-earth DJ I have ever met (apart from my boyfriend – whoops best get that in) Yoda made it to Fusion last Saturday.

‘I made it,’ he said later in the VIP room. ‘The boat was pretty packed and I felt a bit sick, but I’m really looking forward to playing.’

Yoda, aka Duncan Beiny, a hip-hop turnalist who turned from literature student to one of Britain’s most admired DJs has become a household name for many.

His keenly defined sense of humour has captured the imagination of the masses, making him possibly the only DJ in the world who can fill a club, cutting the Indiana Jones theme music with dirty dubstep beats or 80s pop with New York rap.

His sets, which are renowned for being the pick-and-mix of genres, see him playing anything from hip-hop to… whatever.

‘I’m a hip-hop DJ but I’ll play anything that inspires me,’ he said.

‘I get bored quickly. I listen to a Grooverider mix and it’s, like, don’t you listen to anything but d’n’b? I’ve got a really short attention span.’

Short attention span? Yeah the proof is in the pudding.

His first two editions of How To Cut & Paste and his Unthugged collaboration with Dan Greenpeace included cut-ups of the A-Team theme and even Emmerdale, overlaid with gangsta rap samples. The instalment of Cut & Paste the 80s edition began on familiar hip-hop ground with The Message, but soon Betty Boo, Rick Astley and even The Final Countdown raise their heads in scratched excerpts. And then there was How To Cut & Paste: The Thirties Edition and The Country and Western Edition, all clearly a labour of love rather than a corporate cash-in.

‘Playing all these different types of music and experimenting makes me free as an artist,’ he said.

‘An artist that isn’t really interested in making money from it – I am lucky I have had the privilege – but I’m an artist who gets high on the passion I have for all these projects.’

Live shows: Yoda’s got notoriety as the most exciting Audio-Visual innovator, his ‘DJ Yoda Goes To The Movies’ tours achieved legendary status. His current ‘Magic Cinema Show’ takes the AV art form into new territory, using cutting edge DVD mixing equipment that he has been instrumental in developing.

‘Again the AV show is another example of me getting bored,’ he said.

‘I wanted to create a show as well as a set that made people want to dance. Doing it this way has given me two elements: DJ with an AV show and DJ with the decks. I find they both balance each other out, the AV stuff is pre-planned with the music and when it is just me on my own, I am much more free with what I play.

Saturday’s set was definitely proof that this man was honest with what he was saying to me half an hour before.

Mixing everything in from Jurassic 5 to INXS, Violent Femmes to Ice Cube, he had the packed-out club jumping from start to finish.

The bottle of whisky he had requested behind the decks went untouched as he clearly lost himself in the set.

‘I have a simple rule: if I love a song, I’ll play it,’ he said.

‘I’m just playing the music that I honestly love.

‘It really is as simple as that.’