brian hefele's untidy spaceA few days ago, four to be precise, a fellow by the name of Eric San came to the Gallery Lounge in Silver Spring, MD. We all referred to him as Kid Koala, however. His thing is taking a handful of record playing machines, and using them as instruments instead of simply playing records like a normal person. He takes this to pretty extreme limits, often having a handful of other DJs with their own turntables playing as his backup band - turntable bass, turntable drums, etc.
That's what he's known for, but it turns out he's a pretty badass 'normal' DJ as well. I'd never heard him mixing, only his albums of turntable compositions… Gallery Lounge does this event (Loda) every week, essentially just a bunch of DJs spinning a variety of spinnables. It primarily seems to focus on typical, danceable club music. So, under these circumstances, Kid Koala had to fit in, I suppose, and be a normal DJ.
But normal, he was not. He was 'just' spinning, for the most part, but even when he was 'just' spinning, he mixed in his own trademark collection of samples, the Kid Koala sound. He completely tore into some tricky, yet accessible tracks such as M.I.A.'s 'Paper Planes' and Portishead's 'Machine Gun'. Then he hosted a pillow fight!
In which, he picked out three audience members, and had two of them duke it out with pillows while the third mashed on a sampler in time with the beating. Excellent! Toward the end, he did play two of his signature tracks… First up was 'Skanky Panky,' which is one of those tracks better performed with a larger turntable band. Still, he did it and it sounded great. Then he moved on to a few more tunes until he busted out the samples about Koalas… That was pretty much a sure sign of one thing - 'Drunk Trumpet.' A great track, which he really went to town with. And then we all went home, knowing we could die happy.