Kid Koala is the performance name of Eric San, a DJ and turntablist from Vancouver and Montréal, born in 1974. He works in ambient, electronic, electronica, experimental hip hop, instrumental hip hop and trip hop, and is associated with projects including Bullfrog, The Slew, Publik Enema, Sevens Project, Peeping Tom and distorter.

Approach and style

Kid Koala builds his work around storytelling, character and visual ideas as much as around scratching and beat-making. He describes making “little stories” with records in the same way he does with drawing, and this approach shapes much of his output. He is known for using turntablism as a compositional method rather than simply a live DJ technique.

Nufonia Must Fall

One of his notable projects is Nufonia Must Fall, a story about a robot trying to impress a girl. It exists as a comic book with a CD soundtrack and a mini chess set. Kid Koala says the project continues a childhood interest in records that came with books and pictures, and he treats its written, visual and audio parts as connected forms of humour and narrative.

Sampling and turntable technique

He is also known for detailed record-sampling work. He describes making his turntable version of Louis Armstrong’s “Basin Street Blues” on Some of My Best Friends Are DJs as a process like making an animated film, with each note found on separate pieces of vinyl, then scratched and bent into shape. He aims for music that keeps a recognisable connection to the original while moving in a different way.

Source material and influences

His record collection includes unusual educational and self-help recordings, which he refers to as “treasures”. He has said he seeks out records that people are embarrassed to own and turns them into documents of their existence, describing the result as a kind of audio-voyeurism and anthropological curiosity.

Collaborations and live work

Kid Koala has been asked to open for Radiohead and Björk. He recalls performing at Madison Square Garden in front of a large Radiohead audience, which illustrates the unusual places his work reaches. He also talks about wanting to create a puppet musical with turntables in the orchestra pit, showing the continued link in his work between performance, theatre and invention.