BORN TO CREATE
Kid Koala’s skills on the turntable are akin to what Jimi Hendrix could do on his guitar
Innovative DJ Kid Koala is no stranger to film. Over the course of his career, he has delivered conceptual performances incorporating live music and onscreen storytelling, complete with comfy pillows and recess breaks.
He has also tried to break down all walls between performer and punter, though never before to the degree he’s doing it in Satellite.
This interactive event, which is part of the VIFF Live stream of the Vancouver International Film Festival, is going to be unlike anything that the fest has ever presented.
On the phone from his home in Montreal, Kid Koala (a.k.a. former Vancouverite Eric San) could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the project, which sees an interactive symphony developed in a spontaneous collective.
Is it a show, is it installation art, or is it both?
“Oh it’s a show, but an interactive one where the audience gets to do the work,” he said. “In the studio, I regularly overlay dozens of tracks on top of one another and if I had to recreate that live, I would need dozens of other people involved in the performance. So this time, I’m assigning that task to the audience to add an X-factor that should approximate the ambient orchestral sound I’m after.”
To bring Satellite to fruition, 50 turntable stations are set up in the performance space. Each station also has a mixing effects console, a series of colour-coded vinyl records, and directions of how to follow the score. This is accomplished by a series of subtle lighting changes that correspond to the colour-coded albums that the audience plays. Of course, each station will spin along somewhat differently than the next, and will add its own sound effects into the master mix.
The creative team did consider the strong possibility that the resulting sound could be extremely and profoundly unpleasant.
“It could sound horrible, for sure, as the reaction times in the audience is certain to be law of averages in the end,” he said.
“The colour-coded cues each correspond to harmonized tones that each segment of the audience will be playing to create the different oscillated tones of the work. Yeah, there are always a few tables that insist on scratching right through the entire night, but it averages out that most follow through, and it works.”
The ultimate aim is to achieve some kind of synthesis where the music, lights and projections become a distinct communal experience.
“Those little bits of variation, how it’s tuning and detuning around the root note, mixes in with all those little flourishes on the side from, say, that table of scratch-happy people,” he said.
“These sounds are then blended acoustically in the room through the individual speakers at each of the turntable stations, so a total space/time synthesis takes place.”
The drums, guitar and “lead” parts are performed over top of all of this by Kid Koala and his frequent collaborator Felix Boisvert, who also assumes the role of raconteur and conductor.
“In certain places, Felix will work with distinct parts of the room to develop different dynamics and movement through the acoustic space,” he said.
“It gives you more of that Doppler effect that I’m describing and then we sometimes get into points where every station starts battling the others.
“The key thing is that it’s not an intimidating process. We want people to have fun getting into all the sounds you can create from a vinyl record and a turntable.”
Nobody is expected to cut and paste minor masterworks the way that Kid Koala does on albums such as 12-Bit Blues or even the soundtrack to Baby Driver. His skills on a turntable are akin to what Jimi Hendrix could do on guitar, utterly unique and not coming from the same musical framework as other hip-hop DJs.
Where a lot of musicians want to maintain a level of control over their performances, Kid Koala has always been devoted to bringing the crowd into the experience and seeing where it goes from there.
“At each station, the usual breakdown is one person chasing down the right coloured record, another on the turntable, and perhaps even another on the Intersteller Orbiter from Earthquacker Devices effects unit we’ve installed at each station,” he said.
“Hopefully, it’s a bit of a team effort and even if you come alone, you can find someone to jam out with at the show.”
Having worked with other musicians in groups like Gorillaz, providing soundtracks to dance and theatre events, and spending hour upon hour on his own crafting his meticulous albums, Kid Koala admits that there is nothing more awesome for him than hitting that point where you have the crowd drawn into what you are doing and it becomes a collective experience.
Satellite is certainly his most ambitious project to date.
Ambitious and illuminating are two words that the programmers of VIFF Live want to hear mentioned often over the course of the festival run.
While some can quibble that there is no cinematic tie-in with a live band playing and a movie, they should consider that format was how sound used to be applied to motion pictures.
Plus, you can only watch so many movies before you need to give your eyes a break. So why not do that and prick up your ears for some of these events at VIFF Live:
Music BC’s Sound Off (Today, 7 p.m., Annex): So you are a musician who wants to explore how to place your tunes into TV, film, video games, advertising and other media. How do you go about this?
Join a panel of experts in the area of music supervision and gain valuable insight into getting that song into the coming big smartphone campaign.
RZA: Live from the 36th Chamber (Oct. 9, 7 p.m., Orpheum): Hip-hop heads are having fits over this screening of Lau Kar-leung ’s seminal kung fu film The 36th Chamber of Shaolin with Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA providing a live beat soundtrack. RZA has done numerous film soundtracks and written and directed two The Man with the Iron Fists movies. But this is a live real-time experience. RZA will also be giving a Creator Talk (Oct. 9, 6 p.m., Rio Theatre).