JAKEB SMITH talks to UNKLE HO, master sampler for aussie hip hop act THE HERD, about his second solo album and his ultimate quest to bridge musical divides.

If you're trying to pick Unkle Ho from the rest of The Herd, he's the dapper Chinese-Australian pressing a bunch of buttons. Not that you need listen to The Herd to hear him these days. Unkle Ho, Kaho Cheung, now has two albums out under his own name: 2005's Roads To Roma and this year's Circus Maximus.

It took Cheung a long while to finally release his own record, considering he first started writing electronic music way back in 1996. “I was working on my own skills, trying to get them up to scratch before doing a solo thing. They say that you have a lifetime to release your first album and then a couple of years to release your second one, so I wanted to make sure the first one was up to scratch and satisfactory and something I was going to be really happy with,” he says.

Judging from the reactions of reviewers around the country, it seems most people are really happy with Cheung's efforts. But there is something greater to be garnered from his music than simply the mashing together of cool sounds. He is actively trying to reinforce the idea that music is simply music, regardless of genre definitions and subsequent restrictions.

“It's one of the goals with what I'm trying to do with this music, is to bring really disparate music from all over the world together and form something that makes sense. So people don't actually realise that the samples are worlds apart, and also times apart as well. Some sounds are quite modern sounds from the nineties, while other sounds are from the 30s. It's just all the same.”

Obviously it takes pretty broad music taste to be able to listen to different styles and eras of music long enough to discern the good from the bad.

“I've always been into different styles of music, so that really helps. Every couple of years I would go through a change and go 'I'm into gypsy music this year, or I'm into dub music that year'. All that experience you build an eclectic music collection, which is very good resource to draw on.”

More than this, Kaho feels a natural inclination to blend genres.

“Also because of my background, being an immigrant, coming from a different place (China) to here. I feel that it's part of my identity to have disparate cultures come together  to form a new culture, to form a new work.”

Does Kaho feel that he's bringing the world together through music?

“I hope so. In one of the songs in particular Hiroshi Waltz. I've got a sample of a Chinese woman singing and then she's layered and placed next to a Japanese man singing. There's always been a great rivalry between China and Japan and that was my small attempt to bring the cultures a little bit closer together. So say when a Japanese person listens to it and goes 'oh, the Chinese vocals sounds pretty good with the Japanese.' Things could work together, things that you wouldn't think could work together.”

Circus Maximus is available now through Elefant Tracks.

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