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Økapi is Filippo Paolini, an Italian turntablist and sample cutup artist. Filippo has recorded as one half of the duo Metaxu (with Maurizio Martusciello) and also the trio Dogon, and he’s performed on RAI (Italian state radio) and collaborated with noted avant-turntablist Christian Marclay.
Okapi uses his turntables and computer to create music completely outside of the hip-hop school of chopped up music. Instead he has created some albums that veers from orchestral to lounge to quirky experimental music, while maintaining a delicate and spacious sound throughout.

His skill at sample manipulation is really quite amazing. In his live-set Okapi mix techno / broken beat / electro / 8-bit with melodies including klezmer, polk, childrens’ music, idiot-pop, hawaian music…

The Okapi is a mammal which was only discovered in 1901 by an acousmatic engineer. It lives wild in the forest of the Itur Region in Upper Zaire. It was named the Okapia Johnstoni and it also commonly known as the “Daft Giraffe of the Forest”.
One of its strangest characteristics is that it is the only known mammal to wash out its own ears with its tongue: just to catch the weird melodies of nature! He adores those ferocious and vindictive chants that make him sway like … and he fights relentlessly for the domination and hegemony of incorrect and unlistenable music. He hates talking about music and certain music purists of the Forest are definitely not his friends! In recent years he has played for Dogon tribal rituals (Massimo_Zu e Martux_m) and for those more intimate Metaxu deliriums, but he is considered a solitary mammal and consequently has only published one anthem to protophony (Where’s the beef?) for Inlfatabl.rec (small label of the American prairies).