Kid Koala

While in Toronto last month, I discovered Kid Koala. I'd never heard of the Vancouver-born DJ before. I find it hard to believe that his greatness has only been recognized north of the States. So I'll take it upon myself to help him educate the rest of the world. Kid Koala, aka Eric Yick-Keung San, now lives in Montreal. He's been scratching since the age of fourteen. Sonically, he's a cross between Money Mark and a Martian. His first album, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, came out in 2000, and took him four years to make.

He's also a wacky dude. Playing the song Drumland live in Toronto, he introduces himself and the backing band as Bullfrog (his side project), and namechecks each member of the band, including the drummer, who he describes as being "on the percussions over there". It brings to mind Mike D's hysterical description of the Hefty Bag Guy at the beginning of the Beastie Boys' seminal Heart Attack Man. Also hovering over the proceedings is the spirit of Beck, who loves the old-school trappings of the traditional-style band, and often introduces each member as well as bantering between songs. The Beasties are evoked again on Strut Here, which sounds as if Adam, Adam and Mike could be the backing band. Wah-wah guitar oozes over fuzzy bass and pounding drums. Just like Gratitude, only better.

Wackier still is the track entitled Like Irregular Chickens, which scratches the cluckings of the aforementioned fowl over some jazzy brass and drums. Almost at the end of the song, there's such an extended series of clucks, with such a lot of space in between them, that you think your CD player has broken. Just as you're about to get up and check it, the track erupts in a ferocious "Bu-CAAAARK!" The sheer force of it sends you flying to the back of the room. Then you miss the rest of the song because you're laughing too hard to listen.

Other tracks, like Beautiful, take artists like DJ Shadow to school and show them the real way to do things. Moody piano, snippets of female vocals, shivering cymbals all swirl together in a perfect souffle. Made from Bjork takes various bites of the Icelandic singer's tracks and makes a deep, dark tribal beat out of them, capping the song perfectly with Bjork's breathy line "Till it's over" from It's Oh So Quiet. Barhopper continues the same moody theme, with lazy drums and deep bass, but adds the trademark Kid Koala weirdness with a loosely-contructed, thoroughly nonsensical story of love and rejection made from different vocal soundbites.

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