by SCOTT C

Last Sunday, I was making my way back from the catering tent at Montreal’s first Osheaga Music Festival when it started to rain. I was on my way to the arts tent, where I had been DJing alongside HVW8’s live painting, slightly off to the side of the four stages of music and throngs of people. We had been enjoying a leisurely flow of curious people over the weekend.

Then Kid Koala arrived for his half-hour set in the tent, just prior to hitting the main stage before the Flaming Lips. Suddenly, there seemed to be a mass exodus to the arts tent. The place filled up faster than you can say Scratch Happyland, and when the Kid did his thing, you could genuinely feel the love in the room.

Montreal still loves their original scratch darling Eric “Kid Koala” San, and there’s still nothing like watching someone witness his turntable mastery for the first time. Koala gets down to what he does best on his brand new album, Your Mom’s Favorite DJ. With another trip to Parc Jean-Drapeau scheduled for the unofficial launch party at Piknic Électronik on Sept. 17, along with other Ninja Tune DJs, I think he said it best after his set at Osheaga: “The whole city is invited.” I caught up with San at home earlier in the week, and we talked about what’s been going on.

Mirror: I was thinking about the first time I came to your old house on St-Urbain, years ago, and I brought along Paul Labonte to take some pictures. I think it’s great that you guys eventually became friends and have moved on to creative projects together. Is that how you end up working with most people?

Kid Koala: It’s one of those happenstance situations where the course of people’s lives meet and sometimes change. Like the sound technician we used on the SAST [Short Attention Span Theatre] tour, who’s this girl that I met in Boston, and she like, rang out the monitors and did all this stuff I’d never seen anybody do for a DJ, and then that night, I had like the best sound ever! I was like, do you do tours? She said no one ever asked, so we had her on the Nufonia tour, and then she came to Montreal and liked it so much that she moved here.

M: Who’s that?

KK: Sharon Levinson. She does sound for Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, and is too big of a rock star for us now (laughs). Every time I walk past her on the street, she’ll pretend she recognizes me.

Read-along and Cheech and Chong

M: I was listening to the new LP this morning and I found myself thinking about records, like Monty Python’s and You Are What You Eat, the kind of records that I would come across by accident, filled with weird edits, vocal bits, spoken word, comedy, rock, jazz and whatever else. How much of an influence are those mishmash records on your style?

KK: Well, if I have to dig way back to the roots of it all, it goes back to those seven-inch storybook records. Those were my first records! Literally, before I knew what a mixer was or any of that. You know, records for pleasure when I was a kid at three, four and five years old. Those records had illustrations and read-along parts, then they had a narrator, they had actors doing the voices, they had sound effects, and they had music. It was all in there, so all of those elements seem very natural for me to be on a record. Even through my high school years it was like Monty Python and Cheech and Chong got as many listens as Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad. In a way, they’re just as layered.

M: Yeah, there’s definitely a visual aspect to the sound.

KK: I like those records where it’s not just a stand-up comic talking on stage, although I play those records too (laughs). They really go to town with the sound effects to make you feel like you’re there. It’s like if I hear a hole or find a space in my own music, I’ll be like, “Y’know... that would be filled in perfectly with some mosquito buzzing.” (laughs) It’s kind of natural for me to gravitate to those things.

The Kid plays in the picture

M: So with yet another album, published works of art and storytelling, and movies in the works, am I required to refer to you as a multidisciplinary artist now?

KK: (laughs) Man, they’ve been throwing a lot of corny stuff like that around lately.

M: Well, you do have all the bases covered, so you’ll have to break down for me how all of these things intersect and come together.

KK: I actually came up with classical conservatory training with piano, and the “do this, this way” attitude, but with turntables, it was always whatever you do, do it with your own twist. So making something fresh happen was encouraged more than anything. If you have five minutes, try to make something happen that hasn’t happened before. That philosophy has kind of glued everything I do together. If you understand that, then I don’t believe that anything we do in the future will really shock you. When I was making layered tapes in high school, it was never about making something that sounded like an album. It was about making something that all went together and interrupted itself with all kinds of madness mixed in there. That’s always been the main flow. Let’s say that each tour we’ve done in the last 10 years was a record (laughs). Am I just going to play the same type of record at the same tempo for the rest of my career? It’s the same thing with tours, or the graphic novel or any opportunities that arise. We’re always like, “How are we gonna flip it again?” That sort of links all of the things I do together in a big way.

M: So what’s up with this whole movie thing with Paul?

KK: Well, we’re on tour with Lederhosen Lucil, P-Love and Jester, and we’re traveling to all the corners of the Earth, doing this really bizarre show, and people are tripping on it (laughs). It was fun because you’re out there throwing parties with your friends, and strangers are showing up and having a great time. We basically wanted to have something to remember all of the fun we had been having everywhere, so in comes Paul, asking what things are looking like in terms of the next projects, and we thought that maybe he should come out and try to capture some of those moments that we all loved so much on film and on camera. It’s one of those things where you get home from 10 years of touring, with stamps on your passport and tons of laminates, but you actually don’t remember anything! (laughs) In this way, Paul is watching yet another story unfold, and that’s what we’re doing now. Documenting it all with no real deadline. n

Album launch, with guests Ghislain Poirier, Ghostbeard and DJ Luv, and Ninja Tune garage sale, at Piknic Electronik at Parc Jean-Drapeau’s Place de l’Homme on Sunday, Sept. 17, 1–9 p.m., $7 ($5 before 3 p.m.), all ages

>> Music Listings