E-Mail This Article to a Friend Vinyl vaudeville? Kid Koala’s ‘Short Attention Span Theater’ BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

Think of it as "vinyl vaudeville," says Kid Koala (a/k/a Eric San) of his tour in support of his second full-length release, Some of My Good Friends Are DJs (Ninja Tune). Think of it as an "audio adventure." And think of San what you will (DJ, turntablist, scratchmaster, graphic novelist, multimedia artist, or motormouth Montrealer), what you can expect from his cabaret-style show "Short Attention Span Theater," which comes to the Middle East this Tuesday, Election Day, is eight turntables, three DJs, one piano, a slide projector, animation, storytelling, and San’s archetypal aural alchemy.

San, who punctuates his sentences with giggling, hopes to put the new album as well as the DJ process in context with the show. "When I’m at a live show, I always like to scan the stage and vibe on what everyone’s doing," he says over the phone from San Francisco. The way the "Short Attention Span" stage is set up mirrors a rock show rather than a DJ booth, and that makes it "familiar for people who watch live bands," he says. "It makes it a bit more accessible for people who don’t know much about DJing." San wants to demonstrate the spin-scratch process, to reveal the layers so that when beats stutter-step and seem to trip, when the bass goes backward and slips into a molasses funk, when the twinks and honks get tweaked, "you can see how it’s all being done."

"Short Attention Span Theater" is designed to explore the range of turntable possibilities. "There can be these rock-party beats or something quite melancholy. It can be percussive, melodic, sad, silly — and we’re trying to have a show that goes to all those areas." Along with DJs P-Love and Jester, he tries to achieve an atmospheric balance. "If one of the animated films is really twisted, we try to bring the audience back to earth. Or if the animation is accessible, we might art out on the turntables."

San is no stranger to "arting out" in the visual sense, having published the romantic tragedy Nufonia Must Fall (ECW Press), a 350-page graphic novel (with CD) about a lonely working girl and the robot who loves her. Both in the sketchbook and at the turntable, the laws of nature and physics don’t have to apply, "and that’s why I’m drawn to them," San points out. "When you’re doing comics or making animation, things like gravity and structural engineering don’t matter — you can draw a building that would never stand up." The same goes for scratching: "You can take a vocal sample and pitch the syllables way out of what a human voice can do." On Some of My Good Friends Are DJs, San does just that, turning cacophony into symphony. A deep thunk thunk gets matched with gurgle. Sounds bleep and burp, and a car-honk noise matures to a blues-guitar wail splintered by violin trills. "That’s the turntable’s charm for me. You can do things that don’t really have to exist in an actual universe."

So you can expect "Short Attention Span Theater" to be out of this world. But, San warns, "if you think you know what’s going to happen after the first five minutes, you’ll be sadly mistaken."

Kid Koala presents "Short Attention Span Theater," with DJ P-Love, DJ Jester, and Lederhosen Lucil, at 6 and 9 p.m. at the Middle East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square. Tickets are $15; call (617) 864-EAST.