Kid Koala - Music to Draw to: Satellites

  by Daniel Cressey

published: 8 / 5 / 2017

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The glory days of turntablism with their veneration of scratching and cutting up samples of wilfully obscure records are gone. But many of those whose made their names with their mastery of the mixer are still around. Eric San - aka Kid Koala - has pushed his chosen genre further than many, getting closer than most DJs to the often-promised, rarely-delivered ideal of ‘turntable as musical instrument’. So it is something of a surprise that someone who showed he could play songs and draw clear notes from a record has moved away from the turntable for his new release. 'Music to Draw To: Satellite' instead features San on keys, guitars and other more traditional instruments (plus the occasional turntable too). Vocals from Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini are added to various songs in this concept album of two people separated by one of them voyaging to Mars. San crafts beautifully sparse instrumental tracks. But early songs such as 'Transmission 1' seem to flicker only briefly into life, and end before they go very far. Torrini’s vocals are also frustrating. She can clearly sing beautifully, but there’s almost something slightly generic now about the quiet, Nordic-accented English delivery showcased here. And when she sings lyrics such as “Life is a flicker of light on the screen” it all glides languidly over the listener but makes little impact. When things get less comfortable - such as with the discordant notes of 'Hubble Constant' - they get much more interesting. Ultimately there is much to admire in this new direction from Kid Koala, and there are individual lovely moments almost continually. But they rarely coalesce into more than the sum of their parts, something that San’s earlier cut-and-paste work always did.

Track Listing:-

1 The Observable Universe
2 Adrift
3 Transmission 1
4 Fallaway
5 Perihelion
6 Photons
7 Beneath The Heat
8 Novachord
9 Transmission 2
10 Collapser
11 Transmission 3
12 The Hubble Constant
13 Satellite
14 Apoapsis
15 Nightfall
16 The Darkest Day
17 Epilogue
18 Nightfall: Pale Blue

Band Links:-

http://kidkoala.com/
https://www.instagram.com/realkidkoala/
https://www.facebook.com/KidKoala
https://twitter.com/kidkoala

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