The koala is most at home in its natural environment, surrounded by eucalyptus leaves, coastal woodlands and one-of-a-kind vintage electronic keyboards.
Kid Koala (a.k.a. Eric San) is not your average marsupial. He's an internationally renowned turntablist, remixer and graphic novelist, whose habitat ranges from hip-hop clubs to art galleries. He can be found scratching old jazz and blues records mixed with heavy beats on his 12 bit Blues project, but also lulling audiences toward sleepy sonic bliss with his Space Cadet headphone concerts.
In this rare footage, captured in December, 2012, at a brief migratory stopover in Calgary, Alta., you'll see Kid Koala at the keyboard as part of a recording residence at the National Music Centre.
Along with his friend, producer and keyboardist Money Mark, Kid Koala was participating in the National Music Centre's Astral Artist-in-Residence program. Kid Koala was set free in a room filled with classic analog synthesizers, one-of-a-kind prototypes, digital keyboards, mechanical samplers and cable-covered music consoles that would look quite at home in the laboratory of a mad scientist.
The National Music Centre houses one of the most remarkable collections of keyboard instruments in the world, from 16th-century virginals to massive movie theatre organs to the wildest electronic instruments you've ever seen. Or heard. And unlike many musical instrument collections, the National Music Centre is a living museum, where the instruments are lovingly and meticulously maintained in working condition by engineers and staff. These pieces — many of them priceless — are meant to be played, and that's where Kid Koala came in.
Here, Kid Koala demonstrates his retro-futuristic musical prowess on a 1979 Oberheim OB-X. The OB-X was used extensively by Rush on their Moving Pictures and Signals albums, as well as by Prince, Queen and Van Halen (Eddie Van Halen used the Oberheim OB-Xa for that famous keyboard part in Jump).
And here's Kid Koala with a rare Plexiglas-encased Mellotron. It's an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard — basically an analog sampler — originally developed and built in England in the early 1960s. It's an amazing instrument to behold. Dozens of lengths of magnetic tape dangle below the keyboard, and on each piece of tape, there are three tracks, each containing a sound (such as a cello, a flute and a voice). When a key on the keyboard is pressed, the tape starts to play for about eight seconds, and then it drops back down to its starting position. Its eerie and distinctive sound can be heard on everything from the classic intro to The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" to the creepy choir part on Radiohead's "Exit Music (for a Film)."
While Kid Koala was at the National Music Centre, staff was on hand to make sure everything worked properly, and to help him record these rare, sometimes fussy, often peculiar and always amazing sounds.
Kid Koala explained that most of his projects operate on a five- to six-year cycle of completion, so it may be a while before we hear the fruits of this particular project, but don't be surprised if he is spotted again soon, lurking in the wilds of the National Music Centre.
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Special thanks to The National Music Centre's Tyler Stewart for providing additional video footage.