In this episode, Jess suggests you taste the flavor-filled scratchy marsupial that is
Kid Koala and the dischordant D.C. punkish sounds of catchpenny.
This tape rocks the higgety heee-ouse.
"Just who or what is Kid Koala?" you are about to ask.
There's no need to feel completely left out of the electronic music
scene if you haven't heard of the elusive marsupial (I'm sorry but I just love this word).
Although he's been DJing
since he was fifteen, the twenty-two year-old Canadian
Eric "Kid Koala" San did not put anything on vinyl until
ScratchHappyLand's release two months ago.
That is not to say that there hasn't been a lot of talk about Kid Koala.
Eric has performed extensively in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa, and he's also played a
number of shows in the U.S. and Europe.
He won the Montreal DMC Mixing Championship in 1995, had some clips featured in Hotwired's
Beta Lounge last March,
and was also interviewed on CBC's (Canada's national broadcast station) "electronic music"
special on the series Definitely Not The Opera.
And Eric's self-produced promo tape
has certainly made the rounds.
I first heard about Eric San
last spring when I received an e-mail from a friend in San Francisco raving about Kid Koala.
She said she had heard some music with crazy-fresh samples while she was
browsing in a local record store. She was curious, so she asked what was playing.
The people in the record store gave her Eric San's phone number in Montreal and she
called him to ask him for a tape. She loved the tape (it's still in
her car stereo) and sent me Eric's phone number.
When I spoke to Eric, he mentioned that some Sony records people were
harassing him about the legality issues surrounding his liberal use of copyrighted samples (thus, the emphasis that the tape and 10-inch are for promotional use only.)
The day I got the tape, I blasted it on continuous play mode until it had
gone around more than ten times.
There are just so many well-woven layers of sound and hysterical off-beat
samples, that it's difficult not to notice Kid Koala's innovative tracks.
The samples Eric uses come from an eclectic assortment of kiddie records (I recognized
Sesame Street, Charlie Brown, and Muppet Show samples), informational and instructional records
("The sound you hear is
made of vibrations which are stored in the groove of the record."), commercials for Canada Dry ginger ale
and Lotto Quebec ("Instant Lotteries from Lotto Quebec. Scratch. You'll feel good.")
and lines from various movies (in "Dinner With Yoda," we hear the Jedi Master instruct,
"Control. Control. You Must Learn Control.")
On "Emperors Crash Course in Cantonese" Eric overlays a song from Miss Saigon with someone
speaking Cantonese nursery rhymes.
It's immediately obvious that Eric has a great sense of humour combined with a clear ability to mix
rhythms and sounds and to scratch up a storm.
Kid Koala is currently touring
Western Europe with Coldcut.
According to Ninja Tune, Eric's debut
full-length album should be out sometime in mid-1998. Keep an eye out for it.
catchpenny
Catchpenny's vocalist, Michael Sirianni, has a distinctive voice that
easily ranges between rough growls and sweet, sensitive entreaties.
Sirianni's vocals are mildly reminiscent of Shudder to Think's Craig Wedren
(minus the falsetto).
But don't expect to find Shudder to Think's often unique and complex
jugular-hitting lyrics ("My drink is on a short leash/
My mouth is a cold sore display case/
Here's a tip-you could take alot of abuse if you exchange
your skin for leather/" or "You'll wake up better in the arms of a sex killer.") on little shut up.
Anyway, if you can overlook some annoying lyrics and are tired of all the Bush-y
grunge-light sounds pervading the airwaves lately, little shut up offers a more
interesting dissonant sound.
Check out catchpenny's website for information on ordering
little shut up.
JESSICA BARRON, jessb@poprocks.com
is Purr's Managing Editor. She recently moved to Providence, RI, and also works as the Managing Editor for CollegeBeat. Jess
collects plastic Pez dispensers, watches Sci Fi shows, and drinks lots
of red wine. Her homepage, Dangerous
Candy, has all the sugar and twice the caffeine.
|
"What is that?" Nearly everyone in ear-shot was immediately curious.
If you like the raw D.C. punkish dischordant sound of
Shudder to Think (especially 1994's
Pony Express Record) or Jawbox, you might want to check out
catchpenny's little shut up.
Most of the songs on this album are about the obvious adolescent
and/or alternative rock concerns: hype and hypocrisy, social labels, rebelliousness and self-esteem.
That is not to say that catchpenny shies away from heavier subjects in their songs. "Three short portraits of modern apologies" details three different suicides,
"deaf ears" is about rape and domestic violence, and "baglady" describes a homeless woman.
But most of their lyrics seem like teen angst scribblings
(i.e. on "sick" Sirianni groans, "i'm sick of all this shit around me/i'm sick of all the blindfolds and gags/
i'm sick of all this shit around me/i'm sick of all these labels and tags." -- oh please
gag me with a spoon.)
