by RAF KATIGBAK

Kevin Moon is hungry. Not only in the sense that the 26-year-old Toronto producer is eager to move his studio permanently to Montreal and start "mashing out mad beats," following his girlfriend’s acceptance to McGill in September, but also in the empty-stomach sense as well. That’s being taken care of, though. "Sorry I’m a little incoherent," says the artist otherwise known as Moonstarr over the phone from his T.O. home, "I’m just eating some Kraft Dinner."

Day-glo pasta may be the meal of choice for many struggling Canadian artists. For Moon it seems more of a guilty pleasure than a necessity, especially considering his recent success which includes several high-profile remixes already under his belt (Todd Sines, Recloose and Jazzanova) and a few more on the way.

Skip through the various EPs and singles he’s released on his own PTR label and it becomes obvious why this guy’s in high demand - he’s just on some other shit. Bossa nova, deep techno, hip hop, broken beat and jazz all find common ground in a sound that is a genre all its own. Moon blames this musical restlessness on several things - having to adapt to moving around a lot, Toronto’s multicultural mosaic and finally but perhaps most importantly, community radio. "It wasn’t till I was 14 or 15 that I was finding the left end of the radio dial, 88.1 and 89.5. I remember listening to house, electro and hip hop all at the same time."

Although Moon admits to at one point being a stereotypical suburban kid, listening to the Mobb Deep lyrics a little too close and wearing his hat a little too high on his head, his eventual musical expansion was, in a word, natural. "Everything influences everything else. It’s just the way of life. I don’t want to be caught up in just one scene. There are a lot of things going on in the techno scene here that can help the hip hop scene and vice versa. We’ve gotta break those boundaries down and allow change. It’s the future man, and the future is now."

Moon’s multi-faceted music may be a product of his environment but there’s another element that’s also key. "Surprise is important. I like the entertainment part of this whole game. I like really fucking the beats up to make it sound like the CD player’s skipping. I want to catch people’s attention, flip the shit on its head in so many more ways than one. But it’s not like, boo! I’m scaring you!" A response that begs the question, has T.O.’s rep as SARS central influenced his tunes in any way? "Yeah," he chuckles. "I got some dark electro shit, it’s called ‘What Are You Afraid Of’ and it’s got me chanting ‘SARS, SARS,’ underneath, and it’s only intended for suburban youth. Ha ha! No, but seriously, we’re thinking of doing some joke shit. We want to do a sub-label called Ill Fitness. It’s all the stuff we couldn’t do in PTR because it would just freak people out."

With Andy Williams and Scott C at the Goods at la Sala Rossa on Saturday, June 21, 10pm, $10

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