Kid Koala: "Main Title Theme"

Kid Koala, born Eric San, is a Chinese-Canadian DJ who garnered recognition for distinctive styles of scratch turntablism and comical samples after his Ninja Tune debut Carpel Tunnel Syndrome in 2000. Since that time, the turntablist has toured extensively with huge names such as Björk, Beastie Boys, and Radiohead, composed several original film scores, and collaborated on numerous musical projects, including his own Deltron 3030 and The Slew.

San also has quite a knack for illustration, which he employed for his 2003 album, Nufonia Must Fall, a 352-page romantic tragedy about a love-struck robot paired with a short, jazzy soundtrack. His new release, Space Cadet (out tomorrow), is his second graphic-novel/soundtrack pairing, and it sets aside the eccentric scratching and samples to revisit San's classical piano training. Inspired by the birth of San's daughter, Space Cadet is a 132-page graphic narrative and dulcet soundtrack that chronicles a young girl’s adventures through outer space with her robot guardian.

Here, ALARM speaks with San about his newest multimedia journey.

When and how did you develop your turntable techniques?

I try to develop it everyday! I do it by practicing and listening to as many different styles of music as I can. Turntables are chameleon-like. The challenge for me is to see if I can learn to play them tastefully in whatever style is required.

In this technological age, with so many DJs transitioning from analog to digital mixing, why have you stuck primarily with vinyl turntables?

I like the sound of vinyl crackle and record burn.

Can you explain your thought process when choosing sounds to mix into tracks?

I usually have a melody or a story in my mind when I record. I try to bend sound into the melody that I hear in my head. I have a record cutter in my studio, so I will record a single guitar note or keyboard tone and cut it to a custom record. Once it's on the turntable, I can bend it into all the other notes of the scale.

What do you mean when you describe your search for inspiration as "audio-voyeurism"? How did your inspirations differ between past albums and Space Cadet?

I think whenever you listen to a recording, you are hearing a part of someone's life. I like to imagine the life story around the whole recording and what compelled people to make such recordings. Space Cadet was completely inspired by the birth of my daughter. Most of it was recorded before while she was an infant. Each piece on the Space Cadet score is a kind of turntable lullaby for her.

For a project like Space Cadet, do you start with the story line and illustrations, or do you compose the music first?

Space Cadet started with the illustrations.

What do you want listeners/viewers to take away from this project?

Hopefully, it will resonate with readers on some level with their own experiences with family, love, and distance.

Why haven't you used piano on previous albums to the extent that you use it on Space Cadet?

I used a piano as the primary instrument for the Nufonia Must Fall soundtrack. I also used it on some tunes I wrote for Sesame Street. Piano has always been my first instrument, and I usually go to it first when it's time to do a soundtrack. Perhaps it's because of all the Charlie Chaplin films I watched as child growing up. I loved how the sound of the piano would always add to the whole experience of those films.

How has the Space Cadet Headphone Tour gone? What are your expectations for the forthcoming Music to Draw To Tour?

The Space Cadet Headphone Tour has just started. I just wanted to provide a cozy environment to experience this music and the themes of the story. We bring inflatable space pods for the audience members to sit on, and everyone gets their own pair of headphones. This is not a dance-floor record. It is the quietest thing I've ever recorded, so I felt it would best be experienced on headphones.

The show is also a much larger production to set up than usual, so we are taking our time installing the show and gallery in different cities. So far we've done shows at The Contemporary Art Museum in Massachusetts and also the Biosphere in Montreal. This autumn, I will bring it to a few cities in Europe and the UK and next year to different cities in North America and other territories.

Even though the koala attire was imposed on you by a lost bet, has the costume become an enjoyable aspect of performing in any way?

It's boiling hot in that suit!

The Slew: It's All Over

The Slew: 100%

Kid Koala is Eric San, a Québec-based scratch DJ who has lent his hand to a bevy of adventurous projects over the past decade. His ambitious and creative turntable manipulations have led to musical collaborations with the likes of Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Mike Patton.

San’s latest project, The Slew (a collaboration with Dylan Frombach, a.k.a. Dynomite D), was originally conceived as a score to a documentary as a favor to a friend. The film collapsed in production, but the duo was so pleased with its progress on the score that it went on to complete a record anyway. The result is an album stuffed with grooving beats and a more rock-oriented feel than on previous Kid Koala works.

Emphasizing creativity, San always strives to make his interests fit new concepts and contexts. “I think a lot of scratch DJs suffer from short attention spans,” he says. “I think that’s what drew me to the instrument in the first place. I would get bored if I always had to do the same kind of show or see the same kind of show. I don’t want to spend so much time on something unless it is something I would want to see. This never really feels like a career because there’s this independent motivation to keep myself interested.”

This urge has rendered San a multifaceted artist. In addition to his musical endeavors, he is also an accomplished visual artist. In 2003, he released Nufonia Must Fall, a 300-page monochrome comic book detailing a romance between a lonesome girl and a robot. He also released accompanying music and melded the two mediums in his live shows.

“Making custom records is almost like mixing your own paint. I don’t think it's necessary to the craft; I just think if you’re a nerd like me, you end up there somehow.”

“With touring, it is always about finding a live way to present something that would bring the record into context and bring people into our dimension a bit,” San says. “It was a turntable show, but I wanted it to be presented like it was a reading — something mellow where people could actually get into the story.”

Although San now strives for the ultimate in audience engagement, he was raised playing classical piano, a rigid and solitary endeavor. He eventually dove into the antithetical world of scratching, using turntables as a meta-instrument to patch together musical landscapes out of dug-up, old vinyl and sound-effects records. As his craft matured, he found himself urging for more control over the sounds at his disposal, eventually turning to cutting records himself.

The Slew was recorded with turntables in Kid Koala’s characteristic freewheeling yet meticulous style via analog chopping and changing of records layered over each other.

“It widens your palette a bit,” San says. “What we’ve been doing on The Slew is, for example, holding down a chord on a Hammond, like an E chord, and while that is happening, messing with the space-echo dial…and then cutting that tone onto a record for, maybe, eight minutes. So it could be the most boring, useless record, unless you’re a scratch DJ or some guy who works at a meditation camp. Making custom records is almost like mixing your own paint. I don’t think it's necessary to the craft; I just think if you’re a nerd like me, you end up there somehow.”

Despite the allure and convenience of switching to digital sampling, San has been a staunch traditionalist when it comes to using analog turntables in alive setting.

“Maybe it comes from playing piano or something, but playing music is always a visceral, hands-on experience to me,” he says. “I’m not really so down with point, click, drag, and see what it sounds like. I just feel like the performance aspect is what makes it fun. From a show, I always like to see people play stuff. But whether these cats are on Ableton or complete modular synths, or whether they’re playing a wine glass, I don’t really care as long as what comes out the speakers has their spirit in it. You can hear that; you can always hear that. I think people read off you easily if you’re going through the motions or actually challenging yourself and trying new things.”

Likewise, the live representation of The Slew entered new territory for San, for whom Chris Ross and Miles Heskitt (both ex-Wolfmother) provide a live rhythm section, hashing out the heavy-rock beats. “We thought about doing it ‘normally,’” San says. “But it would require seven DJs and 14 turntables.”

As always, San is thinking of new ideas before he has even finished realizing his current ones. His next graphic novel, titled Space Cadet, is nearing completion. The plans for the corresponding tour bring even more concept to the show-going experience. Listeners will sit in beanbag chairs and listen to the music via headphones while watching the story unfold visually.

“My approach to doing music for that project is really subtle, like more ambient tones,” San says. “A lot of the story is about isolation. We want to bring that isolation into the context, which I think would translate well through headphones.”

Although he has Space Cadet and a new Lovage record in his sights, San might need some time off after The Slew. “I think that after this thing, my ears will be ringing for months,” he says. “Slew is by far the loudest project I’ve ever been involved with.“

Now he is planning a residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) for December of 2010 where he and a five-member team will create a live performance based on his long-awaited graphic novel and soundtrack, Space Cadet.

Living in the museum's artist housing, the team will build a set with the help of production staff.  The performance will use six turntables, a piano, and custom-made screens with recreated live images from the book, taking place on Saturday, December 11 along with a question-and-answer session. The Black Box Theater at the MoCA will allow for a personal listening experience, offering headphones to the audience to hear the soundtrack while viewing projections on stage.

In addition to his own outstanding releases, Kid Koala has been a part of projects such as The Slew and Lovage.  You can support Kid Koala by donating to the MASS MoCA Foundation through the Kickstarter website. Donations help fund production, equipment, and residency costs, and because it is a nonprofit, all gifts are tax deductible.

Built around the inspired turntablism of Kid Koala and Dynomite D, The Slew began as a psych-rock score for a documentary based on the influential but obscure work of the 1970s band of the same name.

Though the film never came to fruition, the two were heavily into the project and enlisted the aid of the ex-Wolfmother rhythm section to tour with six turntables and a full band. And if you weren't fortunate enough to catch the modern Slew as a touring outfit this October, fret not — the originally intended "live-only" project has succumbed to demands for a recorded album.

On 100%, circular blues-rock riffs are tweaked and spliced with tactical precision, firmly guiding the grooves, samples, and beats that accompany them. Fans of Kid Koala will recognize large chunks of 100% that appeared on his great 2006 effort, Your Mom's Favourite DJ. Nevertheless, there's plenty of goodness to go around, and fans of both DJ skills and old-school rock and roll will dig this.

Jaga Jazzist: One-Armed Bandit single (Ninja Tune)

Über-melodic chamber-rock ensemble Jaga Jazzist attains a remarkable combination of complexity and accessibility. Yet despite its success and appeal, the group has been devoid of releases for the latter half of this decade.

By the time that we see the release of the group's new album (also titled One-Armed Bandit — so confusing), it will have been five years between full-length albums. Thankfully, in the meantime, we can enjoy this outstanding single from the forthcoming album that was mixed in Chicago this year by Tortoise's John McEntire.

"One-Armed Bandit" is a frantic, scurrying piece that features a dueling harpsichord and horn, a 1970s rock lead, and a fuzz-bass foundation that shifts gears to a rhythmic breakdown and a dreamy electronica interlude. Elements of golden-age Frank Zappa and Norwegian countryman Jono El Grande are apparent, and this should foreshadow a great progressive album.

David Sardy: Zombieland soundtrack (Relativity Music Group)

A diverse producer and former member of quirky 1990s rock outfit Barkmarket, David Sardy has plied an additional craft as a film-score composer and contributor for the past dozen-plus years.

Tabbing Sardy to pen a soundtrack for Zombieland seems like a great fit, and the result is a dark, highly percussive score that oscillates between brooding minimalism, blood-curdling neo-classicalism, and horror-infused rock and roll.

Honorable mentions:

Erik Deutsch: Hush Money (Hammer & String)
Fin Fang Foom: Monomyth (Lovitt)
Sajjanu: Pechiku!! (Tzadik)
V/A: Daptone Gold (Daptone)