vinspired Lake of Stars Festival hung out with producer, promoter, remixer and DJ, Johan Karlberg: the Swedish half of Radioclit. We found a spot in his hectic schedule to chat over fruit juice (it was detox day). He’s a cool guy with some wise words. We talked about volunteering, the festival and about The Very Best, Radioclit’s project with Esau Mwamwaya a Malawian artist.
On vinspired encouraging young people to volunteer:
I think its super good you know... I mean I wouldn’t say I do a lot of volunteering. I don’t have so much time, but I think volunteering is great you know. A much better place could be built on a lot of volunteering...I would love to do more of these things.
Not just the youth, artists should volunteer too:
I think that the bigger profile you get the more impact and the more sponsor’s funding and help you can get behind you to do something really good. You can go from a grassroots level to I don’t know where and that’s amazing. It’s definitely not impossible. It’d be great to use the profile that you have and use it in a good way.
We asked him how Radioclit started:
Basically we started doing remixes after doing club nights and internet radio shows and stuff. These days it’s actually more of a proper production team I guess, a DJ Team. Esau Mwamwaya and our project together as the Very Best, that’s been the main project for Radioclit for the past couple of years.
And how he met Esau Mwamwaya:
We met Esau when he was running a second hand junk shop on our street right outside our studio. Etienne bought a bike and invited him to his housewarming party where I met him. I invited him to the studio, because I thought he could do percussion and turns out he was a like a normal drummer for his church and stuff. He just started singing on one of the songs I played him. So that’s how the whole thing started. That was three years ago.
How they found out about vinspired Lake of StarsRight around the time we met Esau around half a year into working with him, maybe 8 months. I can’t remember how it happened, but I heard about there being a festival in Malawi and I somehow found Will and contacted him. That year they really didn’t have the budget to bring us out there. Last year [2008] Esau was back in Malawi at that point and the record label in America that we signed to at that time paid for me to go to do a video for one of the tracks. Therefore I had the chance to play the festival as well.
They liked it so much they’re coming again
It’s an amazing festival there’s no way we’re not going to want to go again. Last year was one of the first the Very Best shows we’d ever done... It was a bit messy but it was great... But this year will be better. We’re just coming back with force we’ve got a camera team with all these different things coming with us.
Finally he has a lot of respect for the whole vinspired Lake of Stars team. We like this guy.
The fact that Will and these guys have been putting in so much work for these years making this happen. On basically no budget and really just keep struggling and pulling through with it, makes it really amazing.
Radioclit’s and Esau Mwamwaya as “the Very Best” will be playing at this year’s Lake of Stars Festival. Their album is out now on (legal!!) Download and in record shops from October 16th. Check it out, it sounds heavy.
http://www.myspace.com/theverybestmyspace - for the free download mixtape.
If you're 16-25 and would like to volunteer, find opportunities on vinspired.com
Words by: Zen Jelenje
Photos by: DwikoArie (http://www.dwikoarie.blogspot.com/)
