KID KOALA (CAN)

This year Ilosaari is proud to continue our line of Ninja Tune artists with Kid Koala from Canada. Kid Koala's career started when his mixtape Scratchcratchratchatch ended up in Ninja Tune's co-owner Jon More's hands and eventually resulted to a record deal. Since then, Kid Koala has been playing tours with such names as Ben Harper, Beastie Boys and Radiohead.

His album from 2000, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, is still one of the best-respected recordings in its genre. (For those not initiated into turntables: the name comes from a common industrial disease among DJs, usually caused by too much scratching.) The album is a mysterious collection of weird stories and manic sound walls, constructed from samples and fragments of dialogue that at the first look do not seem to fit together, and topped by violent trashing of turntables that acts as a leading instrument. This ballyhoo is only accelerated in the next album Some of My Best Friends Are DJs. This time we are invited to hear how two DJs, down with the flu, meet at the street, or to visit a sound sketch from previous album's sessions. Kid Koala succeeds to make music for real and for fun at the same time.

But Kid Koala's talents are not only musical: in 2003, he gave out a 300-page graphic novel Nufonia Must Fall. The album came out, naturally, together with a very own soundtrack CD.

www.kidkoala.com

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