Kid Koala: On Fogged Out Shows And Blood-Splatter Multimedia

07/20/07 11:00am

by Cheryl Thompson (CHARTattack)

Since he was 12 years old, Kid Koala's life has revolved around the turntable. While his mom thought it was a little weird back then, she's probably OK with it now. Koala's travelled the world, played more than 1,000 shows and continues to push the boundaries of his craft.

Just before a gig in Toronto, the recently married Koala spoke to ChartAttack about being a DJ and why he doesn't really like the label "turntablism." He also shared a crazy experience he had in Italy.

ChartAttack: I see music as being one of those things that for whatever reason, you just love it. Would you agree with that?
You know, my mom would ask me, "Why are you spending all your time doing this? You're going out delivering newspapers before school and then you're spending all your money on records. Why?" I didn't really have a logical investment answer for her like, "Soon all records will go digital." I didn't have that kind of foresight, nor could I say that I wanted to be like that DJ who is just flying around and scratching for a living or making turntable records for a living. That wasn't an option. It didn't exist, so it was kind of like you had to create your own reality out of it and, in the meantime, I just do it because I want to see what it can do and I want to see what I can do with it. That was my philosophy as a kid and it's kind of really central to the whole idea of DJing. For scratch DJs, it's not really so much what the record or the equipment can do it's what you do, with the record and equipment.

You probably spent so much time on the turntable as a child. Does your turntable feel like an appendage by now?
It's kind of funny to try to explain it. You know, a lot of people think "what's the point of it all?" Well, you know, it's a form of meditation or something. You have to do it. Also, I'm very optimistic about the future musically. I can still hear stuff in my head that I physically won't be able to do for another 20 or 30 years and it's just like I have to get that integrated with an instrument.

The art of turntablism has had a thriving life in the underground scene. Do you think it's still growing or is it starting to fade ?
I think that was a thing that I didn't understand so much is that we didn't actually need to be a whole other genre, and that's what started the whole confusion. Because once you do that then you actually need a mixer and a turntable to understand and enjoy that album, and that is unfortunate. To me, it's still very young. I think as an instrument it's probably one of the youngest instruments out there and it's still being developed. Have you heard the last of what this craft has to offer? Absolutely not. To me it's still kind of at that really early stage.

What's one of the craziest stories you've experienced on tour?
Well, in Turin, this happened and I was doing a show in Italy and it was actually at this art gallery space and it was probably one of the most bizarre evenings that I have ever experienced on tour. The audience is on both sides of the room and this guy was going to play, so the lights turned down then all of a sudden the lights come back up and he's basically covered himself in talcum powder. He was wearing underwear, but he's covered himself in talcum powder and he rolls this big sheet of canvas down the middle of the room. Then this kind of creepy music comes on and he puts straws into his veins in the pits of his elbows and proceeds to start bleeding on to the canvas. And so for the next 40 minutes he just sort of walks around and sprays the canvas. I was speaking to him afterwards and he was like, "Yeah, I can only do a show every two weeks."

Because of all the blood loss, right?
Exactly right, and you know, it was pretty real. I was like, "Wow, talk about really pouring yourself into your craft." It was a pretty crazy thing. But anyway, I got on the turntables after he was finished and started to play and I don't know what it was, maybe it was the lighting designer or somebody who was just a real fan of the fog machine or literally maybe he just forgot and left it on — I don't know — but it was pretty much smoked out where I couldn't really see what was going on and my eyes got really dry and I just started blinking to counteract everything. But then my contact lens actually popped out. I no longer had any depth perception. It was crazy foggy and then the lens was on the record that was playing so I couldn't just stop it and take the it off. So, every time it went around, I would try to just pick at it [laugh] without making the record wobble. I remember thinking, even at that point, in my touring career I had done over 1,000 shows that you think you've seen it all, but there's always surprises.