Demented universe of Kid Koala
Published in Berkshire Eagle, 12/10/10
By Jeremy D. Goodwin
NORTH ADAMS—Gazing down to the floor of the cavernous Hunter Center at MASS MoCA from a second-floor hallway, multimedia auteur Kid Koala points toward some large plywood platforms below.
"That's where the space garden goes," he explains, before reflecting on the statement with a sense of wry amusement. "This is like a build-your-own planetarium."
The Canadian disc jockey/recording artist/graphic novelist arrived in North Adams the day before to begin a week-long developmental residency that culminates Saturday with the world premiere of his latest performance project--Space Cadet, based on his unpublished graphic novel and its accompanying soundtrack. (Shows are at 4 pm. and 8 pm.) The story follows a young astronaut and her robot guardian, who is left behind on Earth while she travels the galaxy.
Live and recorded music, experimental set design, and multidisciplinary artwork all come together in this latest gambit by an artist best known for his wizardry on the turntables, but who created a video game to accompany one of his albums and comic books to supplement two others. One tour featured cabaret-style seating, a semi-serious "no dancing" rule, and games of Bingo at intermission.
"You ever just wake up and want to do something else? That's pretty much it," he says. "I get excited about bringing a squad of friends together and creating a little demented universe that's fun for the whole family. That's what spawns this."
NORTH ADAMS—Gazing down to the floor of the cavernous Hunter Center at MASS MoCA from a second-floor hallway, multimedia auteur Kid Koala points toward some large plywood platforms below.
"That's where the space garden goes," he explains, before reflecting on the statement with a sense of wry amusement. "This is like a build-your-own planetarium."
The Canadian disc jockey/recording artist/graphic novelist arrived in North Adams the day before to begin a week-long developmental residency that culminates Saturday with the world premiere of his latest performance project--Space Cadet, based on his unpublished graphic novel and its accompanying soundtrack. (Shows are at 4 pm. and 8 pm.) The story follows a young astronaut and her robot guardian, who is left behind on Earth while she travels the galaxy.
Live and recorded music, experimental set design, and multidisciplinary artwork all come together in this latest gambit by an artist best known for his wizardry on the turntables, but who created a video game to accompany one of his albums and comic books to supplement two others. One tour featured cabaret-style seating, a semi-serious "no dancing" rule, and games of Bingo at intermission.
"You ever just wake up and want to do something else? That's pretty much it," he says. "I get excited about bringing a squad of friends together and creating a little demented universe that's fun for the whole family. That's what spawns this."
Kid Koala on Space Cadet
Seated at a table in a long hallway as the occasional museumgoer wanders by, he sports a messy shock of straight black hair and wears an ensemble befitting the stereotypical image of a professional crate-digger: an unzipped Adidas hoodie, solid-colored t-shirt, jeans and untied sneakers. He laces his sentences with abrupt bursts of laughter, as if to ensure that he won't come off as overly precious while discussing the intergalactic botany of his latest protagonist, or his idea that "every musician, at some point, has to do a 'space record.'"
An accomplished cut-and-mixer with three original albums to his credit, he’s played DJ sets opening for the likes of Radiohead at Madison Square Garden, but truly excels at his use of the turntable as a melodic instrument, soloing by bending and warping pre-recorded sounds on multiple turntables.
Saturday’s events include a gallery of original artwork from the book and an environment meant to evoke settings from the story. There will be small sculptures of alien plant life, and various audio gear for attendees to play with and create otherworldly sound effects—including a cassette-only jukebox, fully stocked with music recorded by the artist expressly for this purpose.
In a clever conceit designed to suggest the feeling of floating alone through space, attendees will recline in inflatable “space pods” and listen to the music—created live onstage with four turntables and piano—entirely through headphones. (Audience members are encouraged to bring their own headphones, but backups will be available as well.) Live piano and samples will establish the basic chord cycles of the music, with melodic ideas scratched out from some 30 LPs custom-made for the project.
Kid Koala isn't particularly interested in genre distinctions. He cites Monty Python and The Kids in the Hall as key sources of inspiration, and says his penchant for linking self-penned graphic novels with albums arises from his days as a child devouring Disney's "storybook records"—spoken word LPs that came complete with 24-page books illustrating tales like Pinocchio and The Jungle Book.
"If you told me when I was 12 that one day I'd be asked to do a residency at a contemporary art museum, I'd ask you what you were talking about. In hindsight, I understand how I got here and I understand the creative thing that drove me here," he says. "Ninety-nine percent of the time I’m booked into dance clubs. This is not dance music, so I refuse to play dance venues to promote this book."
This juxtaposition of artistic mediums, with turntables at the heart of the enterprise, is a quite natural outgrowth of DJ culture, asserts Paul D. Miller, otherwise known as DJ Spooky. Miller had his own residency at MASS MoCA in 2003 as he developed his audio/visual “remix” of D.W. Griffith’s infamous film Birth of a Nation.
"The basic idea is that you are seeing a broad movement of people who have grown up with multiple avenues of expression, and swim like fish in the 21st century's ocean of information," he writes in an email. "Edit, record, playback, rip, mix, burn—graphic design is the vocabulary of the music score in this context, it cuts across all mediums. That's the blur that DJ's inherit from Duchamp to Andy Warhol and even later less known artists like Christian Marclay. It's all about the mix—at every level.”
It’s a commonplace metaphor to relate a DJ set to storytelling, but typically it’s really more about the pure escalation and deflation of energy. Yet Kid Koala seeks to integrate a true narrative element.
He pulls out a black-covered journal with “Space Cadet” written in white lettering on its front, and flips through pages of a hand-drawn piano score to find a blank space. Sketching out the planned layout for the gallery of drawings and the performance space, he talks about his efforts to create an immersive experience that reinforces the storyline of the book, which he says is essentially about loneliness, family, and human connection.
“I can't play guitar and sing very well, I don't write good poetry, but I can go lock myself in a room and read all these manuals about turntables and master all these crazy 5,000-knob mixing desks,” he says.
“The romantic side of it is you're still trying to communicate something. It's not as easy to portray to someone or to understand as a guy with a guitar singing, but that’s the Holy Grail for a lot of DJs: Can you still communicate something?”
Even if you have to build your own planetarium to do it.
"If you told me when I was 12 that one day I'd be asked to do a residency at a contemporary art museum, I'd ask you what you were talking about. In hindsight, I understand how I got here and I understand the creative thing that drove me here," he says. "Ninety-nine percent of the time I’m booked into dance clubs. This is not dance music, so I refuse to play dance venues to promote this book."
This juxtaposition of artistic mediums, with turntables at the heart of the enterprise, is a quite natural outgrowth of DJ culture, asserts Paul D. Miller, otherwise known as DJ Spooky. Miller had his own residency at MASS MoCA in 2003 as he developed his audio/visual “remix” of D.W. Griffith’s infamous film Birth of a Nation.
"The basic idea is that you are seeing a broad movement of people who have grown up with multiple avenues of expression, and swim like fish in the 21st century's ocean of information," he writes in an email. "Edit, record, playback, rip, mix, burn—graphic design is the vocabulary of the music score in this context, it cuts across all mediums. That's the blur that DJ's inherit from Duchamp to Andy Warhol and even later less known artists like Christian Marclay. It's all about the mix—at every level.”
It’s a commonplace metaphor to relate a DJ set to storytelling, but typically it’s really more about the pure escalation and deflation of energy. Yet Kid Koala seeks to integrate a true narrative element.
He pulls out a black-covered journal with “Space Cadet” written in white lettering on its front, and flips through pages of a hand-drawn piano score to find a blank space. Sketching out the planned layout for the gallery of drawings and the performance space, he talks about his efforts to create an immersive experience that reinforces the storyline of the book, which he says is essentially about loneliness, family, and human connection.
“I can't play guitar and sing very well, I don't write good poetry, but I can go lock myself in a room and read all these manuals about turntables and master all these crazy 5,000-knob mixing desks,” he says.
“The romantic side of it is you're still trying to communicate something. It's not as easy to portray to someone or to understand as a guy with a guitar singing, but that’s the Holy Grail for a lot of DJs: Can you still communicate something?”
Even if you have to build your own planetarium to do it.
