Artist Kid Koala

There’s always been an element of alchemy to turntablism. Boxes upon boxes of dusty records, each more obscure than the next; the occasional intrusion of some pop-cultural morsel—a quip from a forgotten television show, say, or the disembodied instruction of a fitness video—amid all the weathered beats; the low-key nature of the whole enterprise, with a guy standing in front of two boxes of obsolete technology and somehow summoning something entirely new. Montreal-based Kid Koala does it better (and stranger) than most, and he does it without headphones, which is kind of like flying a plane at night using only instruments and cockeyed confidence.

Updated 04/25/2012