Clubs

It’s not true that you only get one chance in life, but that’s no reason not to grab it with both hands when it happens. DJ Karen P, who launches Broad Casting as a monthly night at Cargo on Thursday (with live sets by Little Dragon and Charles Webster) and also runs her own company specialising in radio and podcast production for the likes of Fabric and Red Bull Music Academy Radio, was just a teenager who dreamed of working in radio when she went on a tour of Radio 1. She met one of the Radio 1 producers: ‘I got his number and called him every two weeks for about a year,’ she says, ‘and eventually I did a two-month placement there and I worked on all the shows from John Peel to the breakfast show.’
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Perseverance pays off. Especially if it’s allied to passion and commitment. ‘The nation’s favourite’ called her back and she worked there for 18 months until she saw an advert for a job on her ‘dream show’, working with Gilles Peterson for Somethin’ Else Productions. ‘That was the show I’d always listened to at college. Gilles plays and represents the best bits of every single kind of music that you could ever be into.’ Yep, you could say she’s a fan, and she’s been working with Mr Peterson ever since. In fact, when she says ‘I get as much excitement about the latest Masters at Work record as I do the latest Bugz [in the Attic] stuff; for me it’s about bringing different types of music to all types of people and getting them up and dancing,’ it could almost be Gilles talking.

She became the youngest producer at Radio 1 when she was 23: mighty impressive for a girl who had no connections in the business. Since she launched her eponymous production company in 2006 her biggest job has been to establish an online radio station (www.rbmaradio.com) for the Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA), which now includes hundreds of podcasts, available on demand, by DJs from across the spectrum of underground music. She’s hugely impressed by the opportunities the drink that ‘gives you wings’ offers gratis to talented young producers, musicians and DJs from around the world at their annual academies, and having witnessed the RBMA in action, I’d also advise ambitious Londoners to apply for the next RBMA in Barcelona (see www.redbullmusicacademy.com).

Karen has DJed around Europe for years but in London her most significant residency has been alongside Gilles at the Independent Mix, which featured leftfield live sets and a musical mix best described as genre-defying. The night was at Cargo for more than two years until 2006, and Cargo’s Tom Dodd approached Karen to present a new night which could provide a platform for a selection that may run from leftfield hip hop and Brazilian beats to jazzy neo-soul, Afro-funk and electronica. ‘Looking back now at all the one-offs and amazing things we did at Independent Mix,’ she says, ‘the shame is that none of those really magical moments and amazing live sets were recorded or filmed.’

Broad Casting takes its name from the Sonar Kollectiv label’s compilation series (to which Karen will contribute a CD mix in May) and it’s easy to see why it appeals to her. ‘Everything we do will be multi-track recorded,’ she promises, ‘and made available on RBMA Radio, and there’ll be half-hour podcasts featuring live sets and interviews and live sets for the Cargo and Sonar Kollectiv sites too, so that even people who don’t go can experience the event.’ She’s not been crowned the ‘queen of the podcast’ and been placed in the top ten media movers and shakers in the Observer ‘Future 500’ report for nothing.

‘Cargo said “Let’s do something special for the opener, who’d be your first choice?”’ she recalls. ‘I said Little Dragon [the Swedish electropoppers] because their ‘Little Dragon’ CD on Peacefrog Records is my album of 2007. Their singer, Yukimi Nagano, also sang in Koop and I absolutely love her voice and their tunes.’ She’s also excited by deep house and soulful electronica producer Charles Webster, not least because ‘he’s going to use it for his first solo laptop gig and he told me yesterday that he’s got guest vocalists coming including Robert Owens and Sarah Jay who sang with Massive Attack.’ And Karen knows that will sound extra special in their broadcast.

Broad Casting is at Cargo on January 17.