Music
Kid Koala, Dan the Automator and Del the Funky Homosapien are back! Back! BACK! as Deltron 3030.
Deltron 3030 are a superhero-influenced hip-hop trio featuring Radiohead’s favourite turntablist Kid Koala, Prince Paul collaborator Dan The Automator, and the man with the rhymes, Del The Funky Homosapien. They recently released a star-studded second album of warped, futurist hip-hop, Event II, and are currently touring the US with Red Bull Records’Itch in tow. Here they regale us with the records that made them.
The first piece of music to stop me in my tracks was...
Kid Koala: “De La Soul's The Magic Number. I bought the album on cassette after school one day and got on the bus home. I was hooked from the first track. Prince Paul kills it on the outro. I missed my bus stop by three or four stops because I wanted to listen to the whole record. I remember opening the shrink-wrap on the bus and reading the comic strip they included with the packaging. There was this whole universe in that record that was unlike anything I'd heard before.”
Dan the Automator: “D'Ya Like Scratchin' by Malcolm McLaren and The World Famous Supreme Team changed my life. It was the song that made me understand and know I could do hip-hop. The naive and innocent beats and scratching just opened up my head to the possibilities.”
My karaoke track of choice is...
Dan the Automator: “Many years ago I was out doing karaoke with my cousin, Mike Patton, and Iron Chef Morimoto. It was a long evening and we may have been drinking, but we ended up in a Japanese karaoke spot near Marina del Rey. When the mic came to us, Mike and I did an interesting, Grammy-winning performance of Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I don't think I've sung another tune at a karaoke bar since – once you've been to the top of the mountain, there's no need to revisit it.”
The track most likely to make me cry is...
Kid Koala: “Money Mark's Sometimes You Gotta Make it Alone. Mark is kind of a musical mentor. When we toured together for his Push The Button album he would slow the set down to play this. It was a song he wrote about his mother being ill and is still my favourite moment of his set.”
The album I would rescue from a burning house is...
Kid Koala: “Thelonious Monk plays Duke Ellington. Genius interpretations of genius songs. Thelonious was able to show up and reinvent an instrument that had been around for centuries. I can tell it's him playing from listening to just half a bar. He's got an inimitable style.”
The song I wish I'd written is...
Dan the Automator: “Karma Police by Radiohead. Besides being a masterpiece of melancholy, the concept is amazing. Every time I hear it I'm like, damn, I'll never be able to do something like that. A side note, though: even if I could write something like that, no one could ever deliver a performance like Thom. And side note two: I was out with Thom and Nigel [Godrich] a couple of months ago and they were DJing at a bar. They happened to play a song that had been done in my parents’ basement years ago. When I mentioned that to them, they had that look. Trust me though, this song was no Karma Police.”