Kid Koala

ECM WINTER '17 LET'S GO! Great to be back at it with a talented group o' kids. I can't wait to be inspired every Tuesday and Thursday from 1-3PM again.

Kid Koala is who I want to become someday. So, sorry Stone, but you're not writing about him. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Kid Koala's work, here is a pretty long (15 min, can you handle it?) video about his current touring work Nufonia Must Fall. Professor Gurevich talked about him briefly during class.

I'm going to take you on a journey through time. It's me, in 2016, a sophomore taking ECM. Professor Gurevich announces that some dude named Dip Koala (I misheard him) is visiting our class next week. So I go home, google Dip Koala, no results, try again, no results, until finally:

A stylish website with a Soundcloud page embedded on the homescreen pops up. Looks about right, I say to myself all alone in my apartment. I click on Kid Koala's Soundcloud and let the tracks play one after the other. The tracks were all electronically based. Most titles included the words 4 bit, 8 bit, 16 bit, and even turn table. I felt indifferent toward his work at first. I didn't know that Kid Koala wrote graphic novels yet. I didn't know he was a turn tablest, an electronic instrument collector, a string quartet composer, and a world famous touring artist yet. All I knew was that Kid Koala made techno back in the day.

Until...

Strings weaved their way through my Audio-Technica M50x headphones (not sponsored, just appreciated). The saddest, whiniest, most heart-wrenching strings slammed my heart like a bowling ball shooting down a runway and ripping apart a perfectly shaped triangle of pins. The strings shoved me right out of my chair. I landed on the cold, hard ground. I'm still alone. Alongside the strings played electronic accompaniment predominantly controlled by turn tables - a perfect blend of acoustic and electronic. The song was called Melancholy / Cinematic - Main Title Theme open your book - Kid Koala Production Music Library. Succinct title. Kid Koala uses this main title theme for his graphic novel soundtrack Space Cadet.

I want to talk about Space Cadet's soundtrack because I think it poses an important concept: consistency. The soundtrack is predominantly comprised of strings and piano that are distorted or thrown through a vinyl plugin. A listener recognizes these sounds every time. That specific static piano sound. That specific warped string sample. Kid Koala uses the repetition of timbral themes throughout the entirety of the soundtrack yet never repeats a single melodic theme. Still, every song on that soundtrack always screams Space Cadet. Every timbre from that soundtrack always screams Kid Koala.


When you're scoring for a story that progresses with the same characters, the same scenery, and the same plot, your music should progress with its reoccurring elements as well; not change at the blink of an eye. I think selecting our sounds wisely for not only one song but for the whole production is something we should consider while choosing how we score this production.

Nufonia Must Fall sells as a printed graphic novel, CD, and digital copy wrapped up in plastic for $30. The soundtrack is much more "tech" sounding than Space Cadet. During the live stage performance of Nufonia Must Fall, Kid Koala samples jazz vinyls and messes with the brass/wind instruments live while his tiny yet powerful orchestra plays around him. His piano sound is completely different than his Space Cadet one. It's deeper and sounds more like a rhodes. Space Cadet's piano sounds tingy, and it's smeared with reverb. The same instrument, a piano, but they sound completely different depending on which story Kid Koala is telling. Beautiful, right?

Kid Koala blows my mind when it comes to not only his storytelling but his use of blending eclectic instrumentation. Broken toy xylophones from elementary schools should not mix with turn tables and violas, but somehow he makes it work. Space Cadet's soundtrack is more up my alley, but I think Nufonia Must Fall's soundtrack might apply to our class better. The sonic landscape is more electronically developed and offers chances for listeners to explore soundscapes.

An example:

This song/scene made Johanna and I cry when we saw it together: