Kid Koala: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Casual or merely curious turntablism enthusiasts may not hear much diversity in the percussive scratching of DJs, but given a little time, the details become more apparent. Spooky, for example, frequently concentrates on the John Cage-derived collage aspect of cutting, while Q*Bert is fascinated with perverse samples and Mach 3 scratching. Rob Swift keeps things rooted in hip-hop, while Logic juggles jazz and rock. And so on. Canada's Kid Koala is adept at all these things, with an emphasis on cartoonish humor—literally, as his work often sounds like it could be used as a soundtrack for Saturday-morning kids' shows. His demo debut, Scratchcratchratchatch, was half an hour of mysterious (and criminally blatant) samples and impossibly obscure beats and dialogue snippets, a virtuoso effort that earned him a contract with England's Ninja Tune label (run by the turntable pioneers in Coldcut). The title of Kid Koala's first album, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, gives a further idea of where the 24-year-old DJ is coming from. Kid Koala acknowledges the indulgent nature of most modern turntablism, yet he also realizes that there are endless methods of being indulgent: The disc is show-offy, but in novel ways. "Nerdball," for example, gradually transforms a snippet of dialogue from Revenge Of The Nerds into a stuttering, awkward embrace of geekdom, while the rest of the album's varied tracks stretch the limits of playfulness while modestly avoiding the trappings of many speed-and-dexterity-obsessed DJs. Exhibiting creativity that would make nearly any traditional instrumentalist envious—Koala's turntables quack, burp, and giggle their way through the annals of pop-culture esoterica—Koala could have just as easily named his album Short Attention Span, as the disc bounces from pop hooks to hip-hop beats to abstract noise with gleeful abandon. Yet Koala's meticulous composition technique—beats, samples, and sound effects were carefully chosen for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome over the course of months—reveals a method to the madness, demonstrating that DJs can lend layers of complexity to even the simplest concepts. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is like a living, breathing work of art, which, to paraphrase some of the dialogue Koala uses, is just the praise he deserves "for pretending he was a musician when he was only a butcher." And, hey, who says butchers can't be touched by genius