Kid Koala has his hands full these days, between the resumption of the world tour with the musical-theatrical project The Storyville Mosquitothe dates of concerts with the singer Leilani and the design of his next large-scale show, the soundtrack of which he offered last Friday in the form of a double album entitled Creatures of the Late Afternoon. The album, more bluesy and rhythmically muscular than its previous releases, heralds a show that looks like an action movie — oh! —, and its vinyl edition also turns into a board game!
What a beautiful object this vinyl edition is! Inside the unfolded pocket, the small squares that form the circuit on which the players move their pawn, represented by a van rented by the musicians going on tour; slipped into the pocket, we discover the two discs, the instructions and a series of cardboard pages in which we cut 150 cards. A four-player game lasts about 50 minutes, “a little less for two,” explains composer and turntable player Eric San, aka Kid Koala.
If there is a target audience for my work, I would say it is the transgenerational audience. I know it’s cliché to say, but it’s also what motivates and inspires me.
“I played a lot of games with my family during the pandemic,” he says. So he wanted to create one himself. The open sleeve of a double vinyl is the perfect size for a board game board — someone must have thought of that before, right? Of course, answers the avid collector of LPs, the raw material of his art.
It all takes the form of a horse racing game. “The cover serves as a plateau and, on the record, parallel grooves that never cross. Every time you drop the needle, it’s like listening to a new record. You have to put the needle at random on one of the furrows, listen to the description of the race and move your horse according to what you hear. Certain phases of the game also require that the needle be placed on one of the eight small compositions engraved on one of the two vinyls.
The concept is obviously linked to the story he will tell us one day (in two years?) on stage and which is revealed a little in the music of Creatures of the Late Afternoon. Like mosquitoes in The Storyville Mosquito, the new show will tell “the story of a group of creatures, all musicians, who join forces to save the Museum of Natural History, as well as their musical habitat. However, they face this corporation, directed by robots, which wants to impose its law – it is a little my manner of paying the mouth of the algorithms” which seem to control the industry of the music today.
“Musicians unite to celebrate not only biological diversity, but also musical diversity”, which is expressed in the mix of influences forming this new album. Good dense grooves smeared with these sound effects of which San has the secret: there is a jumble of hip-hop, big beat, blues, rock, electronic music and, well, doo wop on 1000 Towns (feat. Coelacanth), When U Say Love (feat. Crayfish) and Til We Meet Again (Live at the Natural History Museum).
Love always Love…
“For the song When U Say Love, I had in mind this kind of song that could be found in old jukeboxes, says Kid Koala. It is actually inspired by a true story: I was helping my parents empty the locker they were renting in a warehouse, where I found two suitcases filled with letters and two reels of audio tape [reel-to-reel tapes] 1960s. I asked my dad where it all came from. »
His parents met two weeks before they graduated, and it was love at first sight, says Eric San. Two more weeks later, her father left to continue his studies at the University of British Columbia. “Because he was a student, he had no money to go back to Hong Kong, so they corresponded, two letters a week, to tell each other about their lives. They didn’t even wait to receive the answer that they were writing a new one. They did this for seven years, until he finished his studies and saved enough money to go back to her! »
On the reels, his father recorded the music he liked to hear on the radio, “the pop songs of the hour, vocal groups, the doo wop, The Ronettes who sing Be My Baby, this kind of stuff. And he translated the lyrics of the songs for my mother, because she didn’t have access to this music — that’s how, listening to the songs with the translation, she learned to speak English”.
During the pandemic, her parents celebrated their wedding anniversary; Eric’s daughter had recorded a short video for the occasion, and composed the soundtrack for him, “like a turntable version of the doo wop”, which gives a new flavor to his work.
This musical flash, “tender and romantic”, finds its place in a story that Eric describes rather as “that of an action film”. The cinematographic reference is even transposed into the production of the show — those who have seen The Storyville Mosquito, in Montreal before the pandemic or last month at the Le Diamant theater in Quebec City, attended a kind of live film shoot, with puppeteers and musicians.
“All the music I put together on the album is the soundtrack for this sort of live theatrical action film,” confirms the composer. It’s very energetic: when Leilani came to record her vocal tracks, she had this very riot grrrl, thinking that it would perfectly match the scene in which the creators end up getting together to save the museum! »
Obviously, and for our greatest happiness, Eric San has never ceased to have the heart of a kid, offering complex, but colorful, sophisticated works, but accessible to all. “If there is a target audience for my work, I would say it’s the transgenerational audience. I know it’s cliché to say, but it’s also what motivates and inspires me. Like the work of Charlie Chaplin, like in The Simpsons, too: there are a lot of jokes aimed at adults, but also this humor slap stick that appeals to children. I’ve always tried to reach as many people as possible with works like this that seem timeless. »