Kid Koala from calumpickle on Vimeo.

As you may know, Kid Koala came up in Montreal, my hometown. I have Koala stories for days. Basically when I started cutting at age 13, Eric was one of the most prominent DJs in the city. I met him at my brother’s college radio show and I started going to his apartment in what we call the McGill ghetto (the neighborhood around McGill University, which I later attended) to practice and soak in some wisdom. Before Vestax started making mixers specifically for turntablists, they used to have this tiny mixer called the PMC-005: it looked like a small cash register and was decent for scratching. Koala used it so bought one too. The only problem was that the fader knobs were too tiny. So he showed me how he molded and baked his own. I’m not kidding! He used to buy clay and mold a fader knob, slide it onto the metal prong on the mixer to make the hole and bake it in the oven!

As you can see on the video and by the story I just told, this dude is one of the most creative, DIY, quirky and unique DJs out there. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen him but I hope we cross paths again soon!