Concert of the year, part 1

(It’s a busy day, so today’s entries will come out in snippets. Check back regularly!)

Forget SARStock. Accordion City’s concert of the year was last night’s Bjork on the Island, which took place on Toronto’s Centre Island, a serene park environment a mere ten-minute ferry ride south of the city.

The first act was young teddy bear Asian turntablist Kid Koala, who did his usual amazing job of stitching together sound collage masterpieces — Dada you can dance to — with three turntables and a couple of cases of vinyl LPs. The highlights of his performance were:

• A live remix of Tears’ For Fears’ Shout, complete with big driving backbeat with a crossfade into some Deltron
• Opening a number with an old spoken word album in which the narrator described how he loved those cuddly koalas and was completely unprepared for the noise they made
• His Louis Armstrong tribute, called Drunk Trumpet, in which he turns Armstrong’s trumpet solo on its ear
• An extended version of his Moon River, his mother’s favourite song. She’s not a fan of his music (“too noisy”, she says), so he thought he’d try to make something she liked, and this was the result. I never thought you could ever get a field of thousands of people under 50 to groove to that song!

Koala was a last-minute addition to the lineup, and according to a friend of a friend who was on the guest list because her cousin is part of his entourage, he’d just thrown together a couple of boxes of vinyl without much planning. He admitted to the crowd that he was nervous, and although he looked a little flustered and made some funny faces the few times he made a mistake (which were inaudible), he put on an amazing show and frequently gots bursts of applause after particularly stunning “solos”. Koala’s sweet nature was quite evident, what with his soft-spoken introductions and “thank yous”, his giving a copy of his cute book Nufonia Must Fall to someone in the front row, and the way he bade the audience farewell: “Have a good night, enjoy yourseves, and be good to each other.”

Recommended Reading

Pound Magazine’s coverage of turntablism.

Nufonia Must Fall. A book with a soundtrack! It’s the tragic tale of a robot who tries to woo a girl with his less-than-stellar love poetry. It’s accompanied by a CD with music arranged by Koala to match the story; you read along with the music and turn the page at the audio cues.

You know, I don’t own this book and my birthday’s coming in a couple of months…