Olof Dreijer
Olof Dreijer is a music producer, DJ, musician and member of the Swedish electronic pop group, The Knife. Olof has been pushing the borders of electronic music for two decades, trying to keep things fun and colorful.
A fledgling DJing career commenced around ‘98 at local school parties, Olof was soon up and running his first club night focussed on Disco, House, Garage, and Drum n' Bass during his high school years. By the early 2000s, Olof moved into playing Hip Hop and R&B in the early 2000's before a period invested in hard Techno, acid house, EBM, Shranz and even Trance.
Over the past decade, when he’s not been too busy producing music in the studio, Olof has been DJing throughout Europe at clubs such as Berghain’s Säule, Helsink’s Kaiku as well as highly-respected international festivals such as Unsound.
At the turn of 2010, Olof started working under the secret pseudonym, Oni Ayhun, to release music that explored different kinds of more experimental directions and play with gender, trying different ways of being in drag and fun set designs. One of the first Oni Ayhun shows, at Berghain/Panorama Bar in 2010, featured a stage made of fluorescent green walls covered with landscape paintings and a table covered in golden cloth, with Oni clad in a sculpture-like rococo outfit. Subsequent performances saw Oni Ayhun bring their show to Tokyo’s Liquid Rooms, London’s Corsica Studios and Italy’s Club To Club festival.
A small catalogue of self-released Oni Ayhun singles complemented by remixes for Honest Jon’s, Macro and Kontra-Musik have established this project in the modern experimental music canon.
In 2015 together with his studio mates Paula Temple, rRoxymore and Planningtorock toured in Europe and Mexico with the project Decon Recon, an attempt started by Paula Temple to play with hierarchies in the electronic music world, releasing music under the DR name, made with a communal pool of sounds, not knowing who had done what.
Nowadays, he's mostly active with producing other artists and also teaching music production. Olof recently finished producing the album of Tunisian multi-instrumentalist and composer Houeida Hedfi, coming soon on Erol Alkan’s Phantasy Sounds label. In September 2020, the first of several collaborations with Swedish(-Kurdish) pop artist Zhala, came out when “Holes” was released on Konichiwa Records. More music from Olof and Zhala will follow soon.
Olof also delivered a remix of Zhala’s ‘Holes” and 2020 has seen further rework from him of
Moroccan artist Mehdi Bahmad’s "Rouge A Levres" (resulting in “a bouncy, neon-streaked feel of the best Oni Ayhun tracks” according to Resident Advisor’s Andrew Ryce), ”Ti Chuong” from Sudanese artists Emmanuel Jal and Nyaruach and the Royksopp and Robyn collaboration “Monument.”
Current Olof Dreijer DJ sets feature a tight mix of all kinds of grooves he likes to dance to himself, ranging from funky Techno and melodic house to Baile Funk and Batida. This was evident in Olof’s DJ set broadcast in late October as part of Bring Your Spoon - The Knife Serves Birthday Cake, a special 20th Anniversary livestream from The Knife as well as Olof’s NTS session.
