SFJAZZ At Home | In My Mind: Kid Koala
SFJAZZ At Home

In My Mind w/ Kid Koala

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Kid Koala

ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Enter the mind of turntable master, composer, and visual artist Kid Koala, known worldwide as a premier scratch DJ and collaborator with Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Gorillaz, among many others. He talks through his artistic process, how he uses the influence from his travels as inspiration, how sound and vision are connected, and how a transformational musical experience affected his feelings about creation as a communal experience.  

Given the moniker “scratchmaster general” by Spin, Kid Koala (born Eric San) built his career in the early 2000s with a procession of innovative albums that blend pop-culture ephemera, unusual and humorous samples, cinematic layering, and deeply grooving beats. From the release of his 2000 debut LP Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, Koala’s work has been steeped in comic book culture, and in 2003 he published a 300-page graphic novel entitled Nufonia Must Fall about a lonely robot on the verge of obsolescence and looking for love, which he first brought to SFJAZZ in 2017. His second multimedia masterwork, The Storyville Mosquito, is a captivating, funny and heart-warming story about chasing your dreams and finding your voice, steeped in jazz culture.