The Syndrome: Kid Koala

Whether good or bad, there isn’t a huge market for deejay albums. A brief resurgence of the medium sprung up during the mid to late ‘90s, mostly centered around various Los Angeles associated crews, but that didn’t last all too long. Of course, the folks who garnered a bit of press from that time have gone on to produce works for a great many top tier hip hop acts. But a resultant effect of that brief balloon of attention was that more outlets were created for deejays to release sample based music. And even with the troublesome copyright problem omnipresent, some pretty listenable discs have gone to press.

The first time I ever heard Kid Koala was in a friend’s car after having hit up the local used bin for all to long a time. We left that store burdened by our purchases, but the first disc that made it into the cd player was Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The brown cardboard casing gave it a misleadingly organic quality that the music necessarily connect with. But that dichotomy would only be apt as a result of a pretty strict sense of the word organic.

What transpires through out the duration of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a commentary on the place of the deejay in modern music. And not just the dude at your favorite club that plays a few tracks before and after a band’s sets – this music requires a set of its own. Hip hop itself, as a whole , has been criticized as being void of musicality. While that’s obviously a spurious critique, the deejay has been all the more maligned.

The inclusion of a number of pretty staid jazz samples as a backdrop for whatever story or idea Kid Koala wants to impart to listeners has to be aimed at the portion of the music intelligentsia that has figured turntable records are not only too difficult to listen to, but don’t offer anything to the fan in passing.

The soul jazz of “Barhopper 1” briefly recounts the interaction of a man and a woman at some watering hole. And if you own records, the vocal sample coming towards the end of the track where a disembodied man asks if his conquest would like to come back to his place and listen to records is probably all too familiar. That’s not the only comical moment related by the Canadian born deejay, but perhaps the most personal.

A few tracks prior, a trumpet solo is deconstructed, bolstered only by a bass line. Kid Koala works the fader to drastically alter the phrasing and timbre of the solo before allowing pieces of its melodic idea to be displayed. And it’s in this instance that the deejay seeks to refute criticism of his – and other’s – work. Even if a deejay isn’t playing a traditional instrument, the manipulation of the sounds on these discs is just as difficult a task as playing guitar or any other instrument. Obviously, some will continue to disagree and for them, it’s only a loss.