K"
ID KOALA FITS INTO
many of the usual hip-hop
DJ stereotypes; he is short,
soft-spoken, a little weird, and
Filipino. But he's more inter-
ested in cutting up a melody
that his band can
groove to than concen-
trating on his flare
scratch. When he's
on the tables you're
more likely to
chuckle than be
like, "whoa." Come
backstage for a few minutes
and listen to him speak with-
out his hands.
Were you raised on hip-hop?
DE
KID KOALA
WORDS AND PHOTOS BY TRUESH
No. I was raised on classical piano, actually.
Really?
Yeah, but once I got into high
school, where you start really sinking
your teeth into something, it was hip-
hop. It cracked my head open, and
that was the soundtrack of my high
school years.
How did you get your record deal?
I opened for Jonathan Moore at this
in-store performance he did in
Montreal; I went out and Cold Cut and
I had this whole routine. I've been lis-
tening to Cold Cut since like 1987, so I
always had that sort of inspiration from
those albums. So he started doing his
set and in the middle of his set he just
started handing me records saying,
"Hey, I want you to scratch with me;
there's some Zen poetry and something
else on here," and I was like, "OK," and
we started jamming and it just locked. I
had this tape I'd put together and they
checked it out and were into it so they
took it back to the label head in
London. I didn't hear anything for
about a month, but then they called
and gave me a spot. So I signed on and
immediately started doing self tours on
and off, mostly on, for the last four
years until '99.
How much time do you spend touring?
This year we'll be on the road about
eight months with four months off.
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That's got to be hard if you're used to
being in the crib all the time.
I like traveling and love doing the shows;
that's how this album happened, on the
stage, and it's how the recoveries hap-
pened as well. That's what I remember,
trying to bring it into the studio.
I was thinking about how DJs are
always in the crib, and how this kind
of music couldn't really exist if there
weren't people with mass amounts of
free time to practice on their turnta-
bles. Could you imagine really getting
paid and setting up scholarships for
DJs or sponsoring people?
Maybe, but at the same time I know that
DJs do stuff and also have day jobs and
that's healthy too. You have time for your
muscle fibers to come back and also to
sort out some ideas for a more concen-
trated effort. It's the same with skateboard-
ing: you'll go watch some kids in the park
who'll fall off their boards for five hours
and land one trick. There's discipline that
goes into DJing. You don't really care if
you get laid or not. All your free time
you're going to put into your love; it's
really the same thing.
What's the crown jewel of your
record collection, the one you look at
and think, "Damn, I can't believe I
have that"?
I have this nostril hair-clipping record
that's amazing. It teaches you how to clip
your nostril hair and it came with a nostril
hair clipper machine, but I don't have that.
I just have the record. The fact that they
made that is tight.
What about competing? There are a
lot of DJ battles constantly going on;
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do you ever try to compete?
I did back like six years ago, and that's
when I was also playing with this band and
we were starting to get quite busy.
Eventually I played more with the band.
But the couple that I did try were very
good experiences for me, just to train; you
do the same set over and over for weeks
and weeks, and one day you just do it,
PLOW, and it's over. It was great for les-
sons in discipline, focus, and nervous man-
agement 'cause there's all this buildup that
makes it crazy.
It seemed like tonight you were more
about having fun with it than getting
crazy with scratch techniques.
Well, for the past four years I've been
doing more showcase-style sets, and I was
always opening for an act or something,
but now that we're all headlining this tour I
felt it was necessary to make it a show
instead of some 20-minute showcase. I
wanted to develop it into a fuller show
with less exhibition, so it didn't just turn
the thing into a turntable circus. That was
the idea actually from the beginning.
It seems like the DJs I talk to are
more solo people and aren't involved
in a band like that.
Before I met them I was like that; I was
just in the basement practicing solo a lot.
But when I started playing with them they
just changed my whole garage theory. They
started cracking my head open. They'll
come and say, "OK, here's this jazz/blues
ballad that the guitar player's been working
on." He plays with the chords and it'll
sound really great and I'll be like, "Oh fuck,
I just spent three weeks working on this
combination pattern, but what can I do on
the turntables that will help this song?" The
point of this song isn't necessarily let's
show off our DJ; some of them are, but the
whole repertoire of the band is let's just
integrate the beats gracefully. Also they'll
get me to do little organ samples or atmos-
pheres that will help Joe. That's when it
started to open up for me, because before
that I was practicing solo.
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