Kid Koala rose to fame in the early ’00s as a DJ, or what today might more accurately be called a turntablist. His skill set is decidedly a traditional one: scratching, beat juggling, manipulating vinyl in real time. His signature move—adjusting the pitch of individual notes by hand in order to coax warped, theremin-like sounds out of records—extends the metaphor of turntable-as-instrument further than just about any other DJ has managed. Still, he’s known as much for his mixes as for his technique. Well before artists like Girl Talk popularized the idea of mashups, Koala was playing genre-bending, sample-heavy live sets, some of which were opening gigs for the likes of Radiohead, Björk, and DJ Shadow. Yet, despite considerable success as a DJ, he’s always seemed artistically restless, collaborating with everyone from Amon Tobin to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, joining supergroups like Deltron 3030 and even penning comics and graphic novels.
Given how melodic his playing is, it was probably only a matter of time before Koala walked away from the decks in order to try his hand at conventional instruments. 2011’s Space Cadet: Original Still Picture Score was a step in this direction; while it was composed in part on turntables, its melodies rely heavily on his own piano, bass and viola playing. Music to Draw to: Satellite represents an even bigger departure for Koala: Its songs are composed entirely on guitar, bass and synth with only occasional vinyl flourishes. What’s more, he's brought in hushed Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini to add vocals to his compositions, a first.
Music to Draw to: Satellite takes its name from a series of events that Koala convened in Montréal and elsewhere, where he played slower-paced, less beat-oriented records and invited attendees to draw. In keeping with that idea, the album consists largely of compositions that blend ambient pop and post-rock, punctuated by electro-pop numbers that bubble without boiling over. Many of these songs are underpinned by languid basslines and glacial synth melodies. Almost none feature percussion.
This is all relatively new terrain for Koala and the majority of these tracks feel a bit tentative, more like experiments or sketches than fully fleshed-out songs. “Novachord” and “Adrift” are slow dirges that evoke celestial motion, all sustained organ chords, backwards loops and in the latter, a plodding beat that sounds like a the clicking hands of a grandfather clock. “Apoapsis” recalls the minimalist synthscapes of early Lullatone, just two simple melodies that interlock to form a soothing lullaby. “The Hubble Constant” breaks the mold by leading with dissonance: its throbbing bassline will rattle your speakers, though the low-end is gradually overpowered by a field of twinkling synth tones.
Torrini sings on seven of the album’s 18 tracks, and these veer much closer to electro-pop, so much so that they often feel at odds with the album’s ambient focus. Take the arpeggio-driven “Collapser”: while it’s undoubtedly one of the prettiest, catchiest songs on the record, it also sounds as if it could have been cribbed from the Postal Service. Many of the lyrics that Torrini sings on the album—most of which were written by Koala—could also benefit from some refinement. Torrini is no stranger to saccharine lyrics in her own work, but many of these (literally stargazing) lines feel especially precious (“When we lay there, side-by-side/Watching stars shine bright like keyholes in the sky,” “Oh, you rustle up the stardust in my head”).
Even if most of these songs don’t feel totally polished, nearly all are brimming with little sonic details that remind us of Koala’s ability to craft evocative sounds: scratches that swoosh past like gusts of wind, noises that clatter like machinery, garbled chatter that sounds like it’s being beamed in from a faraway satellite. It’s in these small moments that Koala leverages his greatest strengths. Take, for instance, his subtle scratching on tracks like “Fallaway,” which hint at the finespun avant-turntablism of Fog’s Ether Teeth. Listening to Music to Draw to: Satellite, it’s hard not to wish that Koala would lean just a bit more on his core skills, though there’s admittedly something admirable about his willingness to be seen as a novice, rather than a master.
