Eric Yick Keung San[1] (born December 5, 1974), better known by his stage name Kid Koala, is a Canadian scratch DJ, music producer, theatre producer, film composer, multimedia-performer and visual artist. His career began as a scratch DJ in 1994. Kid Koala works with genres as eclectic as hip hop, ambient, alternative, contemporary classical, blues, classic rock, and traditional jazz. He has released 5 solo albums on Ninja Tune, and 3 on Arts & Crafts Records, the most recent being Music to Draw To: IO featuring Trixie Whitley. He has also released two award-winning graphic novels: Nufonia Must Fall and Space Cadet. He has been a member of Deltron 3030, Lovage, and the Slew, and has collaborated with artists such as Gorillaz and the Afiara String Quartet.
Kid Koala's live shows range from touring turntable carnivals like Vinyl Vaudeville, to immersive multimedia shows like Nufonia Must Fall, the Storyville Mosquito, Satellite Turntable Orchestra and his Space Cadet Headphone Concert; each of which express his unique form of storytelling with music, animation, film and interactive entertainment.
Kid Koala has toured six continents and lives with his wife and two daughters in Montreal, Canada.
San began by distributing copies of his demo tape Scratchcratchratchatch to students living in residence at McGill. He is well known for his enigmatic style of turntablism, which uses an unusual collection of samples. He has used samples of music from Charlie Brown television specials, old comedy sketch routines (including those that mock turntablism), people sneezing, and people reading a menu in Cantonese.
In 2000, San released his album, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. He designed and illustrated the cover for this and his later albums. A comic book he drew is included as the liner notes. Following the release of the album, Kid Koala embarked on an extensive tour, during which he opened for a number of musicians, including Radiohead and Björk.[3][4] The cabaret-style tour throughout North America, Europe and Australia, known as The Short Attention Span Theatre, featured an unpredictable opening act—three DJs (Kid Koala, P-Love, and DJ Jester the Filipino Fist) on eight turntables set up like a band, and a bingo game at intermission among other quirky surprises. Following this tour Kid Koala has performed DJ sets in Asia, as well as in Iceland, Eastern Europe, Russia, and South America whilst working on a new book and a multimedia puppet show.
San released a full-length graphic novel, Nufonia Must Fall, which includes a soundtrack CD he composed. Some of my Best Friends are DJs includes a chess set as part of the packaging.
San popularized a method of playing the turntable like a melodic instrument, where a long, single note is dragged under the needle at different speeds, creating different pitches. Since this method of adjusting pitch is imprecise, the resulting notes waver and bend. Thus, in the song "Drunk Trumpet," San uses this method with a trumpet note to simulate a drunken trumpet player, interspersing drunken vocals to complete the effect. When playing live, San often uses records cut with custom sounds from which he creates his own songs.[5]
In June 2014, the Kid Koala's Nufonia Must Fall Live made its world premiere at Toronto's Luminato Festival.[6] Directed by K. K. Barrett, (Oscar-nominee for Her), this live adaptation of the graphic novel unfolds via a real-time filming of more than a dozen miniature stages, a full crew and cast of puppets. San and the Afiara Quartet provide live scoring on piano, strings and turntables.[6] San also has another project debuting at Luminato Festival entitled The Lost Train, a collaboration between San and Joe Beef's Chef Frédéric Morin. The two joined to create a series of "imaginary journeys with real food and music", inspired by their respective passion for trains. Taking place at a secret location, the experience will remain a mystery with the guests being taken to an undisclosed location, and will feature a specially created course by Morin and a live set of entirely new material by Kid Koala.[7]
In early 2017, San released an album, Music to Draw To: Satellite, in collaboration with Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini. He released a follow-up in early 2019, Music to Draw To: Io, in collaboration with Belgian singer Trixie Whitley.[8][9]
In 2023, he entered production on the animated film Space Cadet, his directorial debut as a filmmaker.[10] The film is slated to have its world premiere at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, 2025.[11] Also in 2023, San released his seventh album a Kid Koala, Creatures of the Late Afternoon, which included a complete board game in a limited edition.[12]
^Bryant, Luke. "The new faces of music: Kid Koala's got all the technical moves but more important, he's making new music" The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia), March 20, 2004, Pg. D3
