Eric San better known as his stage name, Kid Koala has brought together the art of visual storytelling with his music. Not only a talented DJ but producer, writer and artist, he manages to utilize all artistic forms to weave a story for audiences of all ages to enjoy and connect with. In his latest iteration, along with a fun for all boardgames, this album is a heartwarming and quirky adventure. He talks his career and culture of deejaying, his new projects and much more.
mxdwn: First and foremost, I want to just start by saying, your career began in arguably one of the quintessential eras for hip-hop. One of the key attributes of your style is your use of visual arts and implementing that in deejaying. What was the inspiration to blend those two mediums for storytelling?
Kid Koala: I think that goes all the way back to my very first record experiences when I was a kid. My very first records were these storybooks read-along records that my mother would get me because she thought it would foster an interest in reading.
Reading was one way to get kids interested; I think she read that somewhere. So she said, okay, yeah, I’m gonna try this. I love those so I would definitely just escape into them for hours and hours and hours. The idea of having a story, the illustrations, the text, the soundtrack music and the sound design and the voice acting, all that stuff was just in there. So I could really just escape into those stories forever. As I grew up, I just could never really separate the two. It was always like a multi-dimensional experience of sorts.
mxdwn: That’s really cool. It’s really amazing how the little things in our childhood influence us as we get further along in our careers. I would agree, my interest in storytelling started young with books. It’s the same with music as well so I completely understand that sentiment.
As we know, 2023 is actually the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, and scratching is one of the key elements of the whole genre itself. I wanted to know what are some evolutions of the skill set of scratching versus from back then?
Kid Koala: Yes. At its core, I think it’s still there. I think the ethos is still there, the idea that you’re supposed to twist your own personality into something. You have access to whatever equipment you have access to. Your influences and the stuff that you like, and try to collide all those universes together in your own style, so to speak.
For me, I think scratching in terms of “the turntable,” in the context of an instrument, has always been that chameleon. I mean, that’s what inspired me to pick it up in the first place. All the kids that were doing all the turntable work in the late 80s and stuff, it kind of opened all these windows and all these other possibilities.
And then, as far as my work is concerned, I think I continue to hold that torch of just exploring, just seeing where else I can bring scratching and the turntable to this album. Especially, I think the idea of it being not just a lead solo instrument, but also a background or a support instrument. In the same way a background vocalist would be used or a keyboardist or something like that. The way I was trying to work on these tracks was just thinking in terms of everybody in the band playing their regular role on a regular instrument. How would that feel if they were all creatures with turntables and stuff?
mxdwn: It’s funny you mentioned that because I think about TikTok and other apps, and we’re seeing a lot of mixing, mashups and sampling of older hip-hop beats. Influences are influencing everybody and songs in today’s music. Because of this, is it safe to assume that the art of scratching in its original, intended form is making a comeback? If not yet, will it?
Kid Koala: I think like any scene, there’s just always gonna be these hardcore kids that just get into it. I’m one of them. I’m a lifer. I don’t think of stuff I hear in my head that I can’t technically pull off yet. I practice, you know, turns daily. It’s one of those things where I feel like, you know, if you just watch The Loneliest Monk or Louis Armstrong in their later careers, you see the level of mastery and nuance that they’re able to play with.
At that age you have more stories to tell, you have more time on your instrument, and it becomes more just a part of your DNA sort of. So for me, I don’t know, I think whether it’s making a comeback or not, or whether it’s in the limelight or not. I think the people that have always been pushing the craft forward were doing it regardless of whether anyone was listening. You know, when I started out, almost my entire first decade of scratching was just in my bedroom by no means was anyone listening.
It was just sort of putting the time in and seeing where I could bring it. Is it making a comeback? I don’t know. I think anything where you can feel that spirit behind the human element. I think scratching has always been a very tactile thing to do, perform and also to experience. Just watching it when you’re seeing it there’s a lot of physicality to playing the instrument. I think that doesn’t really go out of style when you’re just seeing somebody doing their thing and having a good time with it.
I think that’s just inspiring. Whether you technically understand what’s happening or not. It’s kind of secondary. But I don’t know if that answers your question. I don’t really pay attention to whether it’s like a trendy thing to do or a not trendy thing to do. All I know is when I was introduced to the whole turntable scene, what those scratchers were doing. I said, I’m with it. This is it, I gotta learn more about this. I gotta start figuring out how I can get a part time job before or after school and save up money for a turntable. That’s how it changed my life and it continues to do so.
mxdwn: Furthermore, we see today’s technology is obviously advanced and the assistance of that makes turntables as an instrument simpler. Your job is easier as you’re creating and experimenting. With this in mind, do you think that takes away anyone’s skill set when they rely more on technical assistance?
Kid Koala: Oh no, I don’t. I think what an audience is looking for, at least in my experience, is just to see your spirit come through it, no matter what technology you’re using. I don’t think you could be a DJ and say you’re anti technology. I mean everything deep, like a turntable is technology, a violin is technology. It’s the idea of how you play it. Personally I think any technology designed at first is to “make your life easier” or make certain tasks more efficient so you have more time to do the things you “want to do.”
I’ve always been one that just likes work. I like animation, which is also a body of work that has menial tasks, very slow like. One would question, “why would you spend the time doing that?” Well, I get to stretch time, I get to spend like a whole, take that one slice of moment in time in a film and just pour everything I got into that one frame and then the next frame.
Then in a way it’s almost like diving into it and squeezing as much as I can out of each of those moments. It is the same thing with making records out of tiny slivers of sound. They’re like, “why would you go to this much trouble” or something you know? I don’t know, I’m one of those people who goes to say Legoland, you know, some people would be like, “wow, it’s a colossal waste of time”, but I’m just like, “wow, you know, somebody had a vision here.”
And you can see all the components. And I think what inspires me about it is the time. It’s that human dedication to something, not the fact that some robot just came, just did it really fast. That doesn’t impress me as much as somebody choosing to say, “Hey, I’m gonna maybe think about this in a different way.” Like Sarras’ impressionist painting where he did everything on point. And it’s literally the sides of a wall. And he spent two years doing and, and you’re kind of looking at it saying, “Wow— what, what would possess somebody to decide to create art this way?”
But here we are, you know, hundreds of years later, still looking at it being like, “it’s kind of a beautiful thing.” When I saw that painting in person, I just felt like this is a person’s life and energy here, at least two years of it, you know, and you can feel it, you can feel it in the painting. And I think that’s the same thing with scratching, like when you see someone who’s just super dope. It’s like anything. You’re just you, you watch and then you’re kind of just inspired by it. Maybe not inspired to start scratching yourself but whenever you see something executed on that level, it could be somebody like, doing something acrobatic. It could be someone in the Olympics, or even someone made a film or someone who built something out of Legos. It’s the same thing to me. So it’s more like that part of it that I’m interested in. I personally feel like if technology comes in and takes all that work away from me, then what’s left to do?
I would be bored. It’s almost like, “Well now what? Now we have all this free time, what are you gonna do? I personally like the challenge. I would think in scratching especially, what happens is I remember when they developed a mixer that would make certain scratches easier because they made up like a quick throw, shortcut, fader and stuff, which made transform scratching easier. That was what at the time was like the most difficult cut you could learn.
And then they came up with this mixer. That “made it easier,” but then the DJs just got bored. Well, okay, anyone who just picks this up after a week can transform what used to take six months. And I think that the scene itself is so hungry and trying to be inventive with new styles and creating new techniques, and just new phrases and vocabulary. They developed the Crab Scratch off this fader, which is literally impossible on any previous mixer.
So you see at that point now we’re 10 to 20 years later and that’s part of the main vocabulary of scratching now. I think it just continues to be this sort of human versus machine kind of race so they can try to make stuff easier for them just going to out-think the machine every time just cause otherwise you get bored, “like why are we even here?”
mxdwn: And that hunger for something new, I notice that the new generation consumes music in this manner. They want what’s new, they want what’s trending, they want it now. How do you think that affects the genre? Constantly pushing forward and always trying to one up yourself. Is that a sustainable mindset for future musicians?
Kid Koala: It’s interesting. I mean, this might be a bit of an aside, but I think about some of our productions that we’re doing, like Nufonia Must Fall or The Story of the Mosquito. It’s like fifteen people on stage, eight cameras, seventy five puppets, twenty miniature sets of film front to back with a string quartet and live turntable on the piano.
And more often than that I get, for places that we haven’t visited, I mean, these tours are still active. Places I haven’t visited, I get messages saying like, “when are you gonna release the DVD?” And I kind of cheekily answer, “Why? Do you have a DVD player?” But the idea of everything being accessible at this touch of a button, that’s not the experience. The point of this show is that we’re doing it live in front of your very eyes. We’re making this film from scratch, on stage and on screen in that theater— live! We treasure that experience with that audience each night. Like we don’t have anything, nothing’s pre-recorded. We have to build it from scratch every night. And that’s kind of sacred to me a little bit. I’m sure someday maybe after we’ve done the show, like a thousand times, it’ll be like, “you know what, we should film this and maybe put it somewhere.” But right now I love the fact that you have to leave your house and come to the theater to witness it or else just miss it.
It’s okay, you know what I mean? There’s plenty of things you can be doing or watching, but for me personally, I love the fact that it’s live and I love keeping that live. In terms of creating a unique experience we even adjust the show. Depending on what country or what city we’re in, we’ll add different sets, like localize the sets, bring in local links to just let people know in the audience, “Hey, this show is for you. It’s not the same show we just did last night in Mexico City, Iceland or in Japan two months ago. Every show, I just want to kind of celebrate that moment, the live aspect of it.
And to me that comes back to scratching. What I love about scratching is the first time I heard it, I didn’t know how these sounds were being made. I was hearing it over the speakers in a record store, but I could tell from the energy that someone was performing it. You know, someone took this sentence, chopped it up and was able to stutter certain syllables and rewind and rhythmically create this new pattern out of it.
And they’re playing it. How are they doing it? Then again, that was the part that drew me to it. It was just that somebody practiced to learn this, and it sounds so fresh, and it sounds so in the moment, like any musical performance, right? So the idea of what you’re talking about feeding the content wheel or something like that. That’s the type of stuff I want to be on personally. But with that said, I had my moments. My first mixtape, that was like already short attention.
So, I can’t comment too much. I’d be a hypocrite to say, “Oh yeah, like, and that was something completely different. We just switched channels and stuff on that mixtape all over the place and that was the point, right?” It wasn’t like I can say, oh, anything, everything has to be a three minute pop song or longer, it changes. But personally, I think the challenge for me now is that even with scratching, can you do something like a one hour theater piece or a you know a three minute song on turntables?
Can you get in a shape where people are brought on a little journey. In that time it was still— I’m actually going the opposite. Like I know scratching can, we can fit a lot of scratching in a really short period of time. I’m trying to see if I can use scratching to tell a longer form story or a longer read if you know, to use a journalistic term. The long reads you enjoy that you actually get to sink your teeth into.
mxdwn: You spoke about having something for people to come back to and in 2001 you worked with Dan the Automator, Mike Patton and Jennifer Charles to release Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By. Is there any chance that we’ll see the return of the group, Lovage in the future?
Kid Koala: I mean, there’s always a chance. Yeah, I would love to. That was a really fun tour, I think we only did twelve cities. I love it, but it was a great time. It was definitely a great dynamic with having Mike and Jennifer as kind of two lead singers playing off of each other in that way. I think last time I talked to Dan, he said he was up for it too. So I guess it’s really just trying to see if we can get all the other parties to come into the studio.
But there’s always a chance with Dan’s projects. He’s also working all the time. And sometimes I’ll be surprised. I’ll just be over in the Bay Area and he’ll just play me something like, “what’s this?” He’s like, “Oh the, you know…,” he’ll have a whole kind of album sketched out already and you’d be like, “Oh, what’s this for?” And he’s like, “You know, I don’t know, what do you think? But I’ll tell you what, I’ll put in a vote for Lovage next time I’m there for you.
mxdwn: Thank you, yes. You know, similarly your other frequent collaborators, The Slew, your project with Chris Ross and Miles Heskett, are there any plans in the works?
Kid Koala: And Dynomite D. Yeah, Dynomite D is the main cat there. He’s a DJ originally from Seattle.. The two of us, then we brought in L’s, DJ recipes from Seattle, and then Chris Ross, Miles. So when that record was done and we had to tour it, Chris Ross and Miles from formerly Wolf Mother kind of joined our live crew and the P-Love was a phenomenal cat who I’ve toured with several times.
So they’re all like, and now it’s just like one big family. So um, yes, is there going to be more Slew stuff? I absolutely hope so. We have already, like skeletal versions of, I’d say like 14 tracks. But again, the issue right now more than anything is scheduling. Plus vicinity in terms of everyone’s location. So now that things are opening up again, hopefully we’ll all be able to just get back in the studio together.
mxdwn: In the meantime, I know you have a new album you just released. As an icon in this industry, you’ve been known to and you talked about it already— you’ve experimented and explored with your sound and genre-bending your whole career. You touched on it already, but can you expand more about your process to decide which genre is within this new album you decide to showcase?
Kid Koala: All right. So I think again, I think it started from the music side, just exploring, recording and writing techniques. And seeing what kind of tones I was getting, kind of creating. Then a palette of sounds to work from and some of them just started pushing in a certain direction so one might head towards like a 50s/60s jukebox tune while another might sound like more of a you know a Sky 7 inch or something. And really it started just me trying to see if I can make the turntable bend into these areas and as the tone started to come, the tones started to come back. I was playing all the instruments in the studio, but like say— “Jump in Shuffle” is a perfect example.
I actually was able to acquire a second hand SoundCraft Series One console. I’m about to nerd out here, but here we go. So this is the console that Lee Scratch Perry used in his studio and they had one at Cbgb’s, you know, in New York, like back in the era. So it was this kind of little console that everyone knew had this crunchy tone to it. So the first thing, once I got it back in the studio, I said, I want to see if it, if I overdrive all the preamps, whether I’ll get that sort of blocky crunchy sound that it has. And it did exactly that. So I was like, “Oh whoa, yeah, I want to make a turntable Scotts now.”
But through this console and overdrive every layer and see if I can get that seven inch, you know, dub sound that I love. And that was really just having fun pushing the equipment and the turntable through that equipment into those areas. So it started first with just, you know, the kind of playing around on the different tracks and every instrument I had in my studio.
Like it could be drums going through a certain compressor and then through a certain reverb and it felt like, “oh hey, that feels like a drum sound.” And then that kind of just let it go in that direction on one track. So I had these sort of a few starts, but at one point I realized that, there was a connection, possibly, for this time that I was in the studio. There might have been a thread I could tie through it. And that was when simultaneously I was working on the artwork and the board game and I was painting all these creatures.
So I was painting like a scratch board drawing. I was painting like, you know, like a mantis on S1200, another crustacean creature on a clarinet. Just having fun. I was also doing the paintings which ended up being in the board game. So the record, you know, has all these creatures. That I was painting in the studio, so they were beginning to populate my actual physical space in the studio.
I had like tens, dozens of these creatures. Just paintings and various forms of completion holding instruments. And then I’d go into the studio and I would say, “Oh, what kind of sound would that sloth make on a fuzz bass?” These creatures started informing me a little bit. They became my muse of like what kind of sounds would they make if they started a band?
mxdwn: This record was created to accompany a story-based board game featuring a harrowing adventure between creatures with the goal to save their home, which comes first in your creative process? Is it an outline of a story that sparks the sonic vision or is it the music that influences the story?
Kid Koala: At one point when it really clicks was when I realized it’s like, oh, this album can be the soundtrack to the next stage production. Like in the style of Storyville Mosquito, in the style of Nufonia Must Fall. So I said, “Okay, so if that’s, if that’s the case, then what kind of show or film are we going to create this time?”
And the answer was an action movie. The first and the second kind of decision was made. It became very clear. It’s like, “oh, I need something in the third act, I need a final battle showdown track.
So Rise of the Tart Gras is that. In the opening I need something really punchy for the opening credits and so that’s here now. This song is great to introduce this character and that character. And then there’s a little high sequence like I need some kind of sneaky, you know, Scooby Doo style music. At this point, you know, while they’re trying to sneak into whatever, you know, hack into the mainframe or whatever. So there was, there was all these things that were kind of I was just realizing, “oh, this is where some of these experimental tracks could fit together if the story.” As the story started to congeal it was telling me, “oh, you needed a track here for this motorcycle chase.”
So “Highs, Lows and Highways” is bad or for the love story, like, you know, what, what can we put to be the heart of their meeting and their date montage or whatever. And so “When You Say Love,” the instrumental version, even though it started outside of the story, it ended up being like, “Oh, that actually fits really well.” I kind of have musically supervised all my sessions to see if it could fit into this soundtrack in my mind, and none of this will make any sense. Until people see the show in two years. But I do think as an album, you can just listen to it. That’s an album and it goes to all these places.
mxdwn: It sounds like you already touched on the board game itself, but the music seems to help outline the story itself. Or were there some elements of the story pre-planned? Kind of like just a rough bones of an outline of acts, and then the music helps spruce it up.
Kid Koala: Exactly! So, I’ve already storyboarded the story. And while my brain was in this world and these creatures were on the walls and I was working on music, it just started to harmonize at least as far as the concept for me. And so some of those tracks are meant to be specific music cues for some of the storyboards, which isn’t in the artwork. Like I said, no one’s gonna see that until the show is out.
That said, I still listen to it front to back saying, “Okay, does it go on this sort of adventure? Are there these moments?” Does it balance in terms of, “okay, we just did this really dark tune where
I introduced the villain of the story, but for someone who’s listening and not thinking about a story, like is there some way to bring some levity to the tone of the album? I wanted to keep it balanced in terms of some of the stuff that’s more moody in tone and some of the more playful, quirky stuff. And I have very cartoony scenes in my mind for each track. Again, I’m not sure that’ll make perfect sense to anyone outside of my mind right now. It will probably make more sense if people see the show, but in the meantime, I hope they just enjoy the record as kind of an audio adventure.
mxdwn: From my listens, I could feel the story moving in my mind. So I think that came off for me. It was like the listener is Alice following the rabbit down this hole. So you definitely accomplished an adventure sonically.
Kid Koala: Oh, thank you, thank you. Absolutely.
mxdwn: A bit more on the different creative processes. I want to know, do they differ depending on the role you’re in? If you’re in the performer role to composing to theater production, how do those work together differ?
Kid Koala: I think with the new productions they are multifaceted. It’s music, it’s live performance, it’s scratching, it’s film scoring, it’s comedy, it’s drama, it’s all of that. I think it’s just me trying to create that sandbox, where, like all my favorite things and including this wonderful team of talented artists that I get to collaborate and perform with, you know, in those shows. I spent a lot of time, I spent like decades, just deejaying by myself, which is fun, don’t get me wrong.
I still love rocking parties in that method, but once I got a taste of, “Hey, if we all, you know, 15 of us like to work together and we’re talking, oh, there’s cinematographers, there’s a string trio, or string quartet…” What other kinds of moods like it forced me to kind of figure out even new ways to play the turntable to support those. So there’s real, poignant emotional moments in those shows. There’s very suspenseful, action packed moments and then, you know, very comedic moments in the shows and, and I have fun with them.
I don’t know. To me, the rule was like if we’re at rehearsal and we’re not laughing every 5 minutes then we’re doing it wrong. So it’s one of those things like, I’m just trying to create some fun while we’re working on the process, but then also, present something fun for people to go to and experience.
mxdwn: That segues perfectly to my next question. You mentioned that this album’s notable theme was around creating things to joyfully connect people.
Kid Koala: Yes.
mxdwn: Other than that, what was the motivation behind that?
Kid Koala: What’s the motivation behind that? My recollection of that even being a thing was watching a Charlie Chaplin film when I was five or six with my mom, grandparents and my sister. My mom said, “hey, we’re gonna watch a movie as a family.” Including my grandmother who didn’t speak any English or anything. All these generations watch the same movie. And I was just being a bratty kid like, “ah, come on.”
She started playing Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin. And you know, the movie started and I said, “what, this is an old timey.” And so I was kind of already sort of already kind of pushing back against it. But within the beginning minutes I just switched. I just was all in. I was like, “Wait, this is funny, what’s going on?” I’m trying to solve what’s happening here and piecing it together.
And there were no words, it was actually just done in that universal physical acting and the music kind of can push you emotionally to feel certain things or like augment certain scenes. While that movie was going, I very specifically remember my entire family, all three generations laughing at the same time and, you know, biting their nails at the same time or being moved and be like during the poignant moments whisper, quiet.
And I didn’t even know what production was, I didn’t know what that was as a child, I was just like, maybe prior to that I thought anything that was on TV was just real life. As if it was like the news, like somebody, right? That’s when I realized, I said “No, they created this to create this feeling. My whole family will enjoy it.”
And it was, it’s one of a handful of times that I remember all three generations of my family, like just being totally enchanted by one piece of art. At that moment I knew. I didn’t know what show business was or anything. I just said, when I grow up, I want to make something that makes this feeling, whatever’s happening in the living room right now, all of us here together, laughing together. You know, being moved by one piece of art together, so it goes way back. For me it’s very deep rooted, a compulsion to create something that’ll do that. I’m not sure I’m there yet, but I keep trying to have some fun along the way.
mxdwn: As we talked about storytelling techniques, some are more interactive and others are traditional style. And you mentioned how depending on where you go, you guys make it a point to make it local, make it relatable in that area. How do you maintain a cohesive story to shine through each iteration?
Kid Koala: Well, yeah, I think the core story, scenes and story beats are still the same. But I think when we go, when we talk about localizing one of the shows, it can sometimes be very simple, like just shouting out the local cuisine. One of the storefronts becomes enough for people to realize it’s like, “Whoa, okay, wait, I’m not just watching some story here. Somebody actually built that and they went and look, visited that establishment, you know. Try to design it to look like that and and have that feeling and for us.
You know, I think there’s a way of going on tour where you just stay in your hotel room and you don’t actually engage with the city itself. And I think with that tour, especially since we’re in a city, usually we stay for a few days or a week. We actually have some time to get out there, you know, after we’ve set up everything, we’re like, “Okay, let’s go explore, let’s see what this town is about.” The local host will just show us around and then during that we’re just trying to be present and celebrate that and then of course bring it back into the show.
Just to have some fun with that and people, the audience, usually you kind of enjoy those localization moments, You know, it’s because the story itself is, I mean, you’re usually very universal saying Nufonia. It was about, you know, it was about a robot trying to write love songs, but really a metaphor for like finding your voice or getting your out of your own way, you know, in your head, mentally, before you can, tap into the good stuff.
Same with Mosquito, the idea of moving to some new place and learning and facing adversity, but then trying to find a community that understands, you know, what you’re trying to do. So these are very like universal and sometimes even trope-y stories, but at the same time I think because there’s a familiarity there that the characters themselves can be quite fantastic. Like it could be a mosquito, it could be a robot, and people relate to it almost like they feel for it.
I mean, some people after the shows, they’ll say, “Hey, how’d you make the robot cry?” And we’re like, “We didn’t make the robot cry, you made the robot cry.” You were feeling that and you were projecting whatever experiences you had because the characters don’t talk. There’s music that kind of pushes it along, but I think people have to sort of mirror their experiences onto that character. I’ve experienced that personally or I know someone who has or something. It’s not just like, “Hey, I’m here to show you some really avante-garde stuff that you leave going, “I don’t know what that was?” I think these shows are designed to just connect.
mxdwn: Between the different shows, would you say there’s one that’s easier to perform or one that’s more challenging?
Kid Koala: Ooh. You mean from a technical level or just as an energy?
mxdwn: Both.
Kid Koala: They’re different in a way like, say, Satellite Turntable Orchestra where The X Factor is like, the margin is way larger because the actual audience is performing the music with us. So everybody is seated at their own turntable stations. They have color coded harmony records that we queue via these colored LED lights that can change the color.
So, say your turntable station turns purple then you have to find the purple record and queued up and so there’s all a margin of drift in terms of how “accurate” the audience is playing. That said, I think, we’ve kind of dialed it in where it always still sounds in terms of the feeling of the song is still there, and the audience brings in their crescendos and their other harmonies, and they are like a choir.
But then, of course, there’s always a couple rogue turntable stations that are just either they play the wrong record, they’re scratching all the time or whatever. And that actually adds some musical interest to0, like personally I feel it, I feel that energy. But it’s not, I wouldn’t say it’s difficult, I would just say, I’m surprised at how different every group that would come in to Satellite turntable sounds. We just did seven shows. A couple weeks ago in one city and every performance had a different kind of way of playing, which was cool. Like I actually liked that, you know. Different in terms of like, not in the way you would expect, like some of the afternoon shows where there were a lot of families.
You know, some people might think, “oh, that must have been really chaotic cause the kids must have just gone like nuts and broke all the needles.” And I’m like, “no, actually the kids were very, very like, focused.” Felix, he’s sort of conducting as well, so the lights turn on. That tells you what record to cue. But then he’s also conducting in terms of dynamic volumes and stuff like that. He was saying, “oh, the afternoon shows, like it was almost like dialed in, like they, maybe it’s like the later shows, people were just drawing to see, which is fun.”
But there was a tone difference, like literally. The show that had where all the tables were families and had half kids operating the turntables. There was a sort of naive focus about it. That was actually very beautiful to hear. And then similarly, the late Saturday night party rocking shows had this sort of kind of brash sound and it was fun.
Like I play off of that, like it’s almost like, if you’re what I imagine if you’re in a stand up club and then there’s like a lot of hecklers, you can actually play off that energy and create things on the spot, which is fun.
So that’s sort of, that dynamic was interesting. I just love that. I love the fact that the shows don’t have to be this cookie cutter like, oh, we’re just doing the same things over and over again.
mxdwn: I know that you’re going on tour with Leilani, can you elaborate more about that collaboration?
Kid Koala: Right, so I was working on Creatures and I had this track written called “Things Are Gonna Change.” And then through a mutual friend, I was introduced to her work and when I heard her voice, I said, “Oh, she’s got that girl voice.” That kind of Power Puff energy that this track needs. That really clear shout shout voice. And I said, “Oh. You know, this could work.”
So I reached out to her and she, funnily enough, had attended the Nufonia Must Fall show a few years ago. And so I was kind of on her radar a bit. And so, because it was just that easy. I said, “Hey, you know, would you be down to shout on this track?” And then she agreed and we had so much fun working on that track that I said, “Hey let’s try, you know, do a couple shows together and see how it goes.”
There was a cool chemistry, I mean first of all, let’s just talk about her for a second. I think she’s phenomenal. She writes, produces, releases and does her own artwork, and she can sing. She has her own one girl punk band too, which I also love, called The Pez Heads. So I was just like, “Wow, she’s like the whole package, she’s the real deal.”
But then when we worked on the track together it was like, oh, there’s, there’s a cool dynamic here where if we broke it down. Like in the tradition of duo bands, like, say, you know, like White Stripes or Black Keys or something like that was like, how much noise can two people make?
But in this case, Instead of drums and guitar, it’s like a turntable and NPC and so we’re having fun, just kind of exploring. What could that evolve into? We’ve only done like a handful of shows together so far, but we’re always like before the tour, you know, trying a couple things out and then testing it so it’s fun. I think we both are interested in writing some more stuff together as a duo. Despite that, I think everyone should pay attention to what she’s doing.
It is so hard. It’s really annoying how talented she is for someone her age. Be so evolved already. Like when I heard The Pest, that stuff was like, “When did you write that?” She’s like, “Oh, I wrote that in high school.” And like, what? How’d you record it? Her answer was it was when she was in college. But those songs sound like legit punk songs. Like it had everything. So I was blown away.
mxdwn: I can say that’s probably really exciting for people to look forward to.
Kid Koala: For sure, I want her. For me, part of just bringing her on the road is cause I kind of feel like just more people need to see what she’s doing. Like when I actually saw her kind of doing the pads live like no grid and there’s nothing she’s doing every single live while singing on and, you know, beautifully singing on it to, you know, on some of her more electronic stuff. I was kind of like, “How are you doing it, you know?” And I’m a multitask guy as you know, but even then I’m just standing back, like what?
mxdwn: Lastly, as we’ve touched on this slightly, but you know, any other future projects in the works fans can look forward to?
Kid Koala: Yes, absolutely so. We’re gonna start doing these creature board game events. And that’s just a fun afternoon thing to actually do. We’ll bring board games and we’ll bring the turntable for every table and I thought it would be fun to as a fun afternoon thing to do. So we’re going to start doing that in a few cities. Yeah, Leilani and I have some more like the night club shows together and then, yes, the creatures of the late afternoon.
And stage production is sort of in its prototype storyboard era. And now that is not really going to premiere for at least another two years, probably because currently we’re actually on tour with The Story of Mosquito. With the pandemic, everything kind of got pushed. So right now we’re just sort of continuing rather than just starting our story of mosquito tours. So that will be hitting a number of cities in the next two years. A lot all over. And finally my day job right now is actually, we’re in production of my first feature animated film debut.
So I’m directing a CGI animated version of Space Cadet, which was my second graphic novel. And so that’s actually a full time job. It’s my day to day. Weekends and nights I’m doing music, but in the day we’re like, we’re here, we’re in the design phase and about to start animation. That’s on the front burner at the moment, but more news on that soon. But yeah, everything’s kind of moving forward. I’m just happy to be able to work with such great people and get out on tour again after. almost three year hiatus.
It’s just wonderful to just see people out again, dipping their toes into like, okay, you know, do I even like live music or live experiences anymore? And to find out that they do, I think that’s a wonderful feeling.
mxdwn: It’s amazing to have all these creative projects after such a bleak time, and that’s what saved us. I think I will always say that that’s what saved people during that time is all the creative art that people like you were willing to share with the world to take the time to. So it’s amazing that there’s so much to look forward to and continue to look forward to. I want to thank you one more time for sitting down with mxdwn.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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