Pictures of Kid Koala give the game away - he's a sensitive soul with an impish sense of humour that leaps out often unexpectedly. It's this thoroughly likeable personality that translates into his scratch music, and was all too evident on his 'Short Attention Span Theatre' tour of Europe three years back. For now though, Kid Koala - Vancouver-born Eric San - has gone back to basics, and can't wait to talk about his new album, 'Your Mum's Favorite DJ'.

"It was super fun to make - we laughed a lot, even the mastering man. Humour is important to me, because there's not a lot of laughter in scratch music." Describing his approach to the recording, he says, "I wanted to go back to the sort of tapes I used to make, and so I went out and bought some reel to reel and did it on that. It's different from a computer because you only have 15 minutes for each side, and you just can't buy 200 reels of tape every day so you have to get it right early on. I went back to the old scratch tapes to see what I could do, and it was recorded relatively quickly - in three months I think. Some of these records I'd had for many years and tours. The recording I did without an advance, as I didn't want to be a burden to Ninja."

It's not many artists that hold their record label in such high regard, yet Kid Koala is conscious that the last albums were expensive to produce, with their accompanying art material. "This time it's about photography rather than a comic book," he says. But does this mean his cult characters Grandmaphone and Megatron will be consigned to history? "These characters will be starring on their new website. The book with the last album ('Some Of My Best Friends Are DJs') was great but since 2001 we’ve had a nice collection of photos, so there's a mini photo essay with this one. One shot of the audience at a gig in Toronto has them all wearing Megatron masks!"

The 'Short Attention' tour was a uniquely interactive experience for the fans. Audiences got to warm up with the wacky German singer Lederhosen Lucil, who wrote songs about dried apricots and trains amongst other things - Eric remembers it fondly. "I would know by the time she'd been on, how the audience reacted, as to how the whole evening was going to go. Some people didn't get her, but most people loved it."

And then there was the bingo, with one card per ticket holder, devised by Kid Koala himself with the help of his characters. "I had no automatic generator, so had to cut and paste 200 cards myself, and I messed the order up so that if things went a certain way we could have, like, 16 winners!" He explodes with laughter, before continuing, "I was nervous I was going to have to give the decks away or something. After all, if you win bingo, you should win a prize, not public humiliation. We made them play stone-paper-scissors to see who won the top prize, but we were able to give some people consolation prizes."

The tour clearly holds fond memories for the DJ. "It was the best show, just the vibe that we got from the audiences. Some cities didn't believe me when I said we wanted tables and chairs on the dancefloor. I wanted to do something different though, because when it's just a scratch turntable and nothing else your eyes just glaze over, so we tried to lift the format."

However it's not a format he'll be revisiting - like many a good artist he continues to seek new ways of doing things. "We'd got up to eight turntables and three DJs on the tour, we had people eating in their seats while others were dancing. It was great fun at the time and to have the show on CD is brilliant, but now it seems like the people who were following the music early on have all had babies, and the kids coming to the show are more rowdy. I think the new tour will reflect that."

Eric's friend Monkmus constructed movies featuring the Koala characters to accompany the live show, and these were aired in breaks while the DJs changed records. Likewise in between concerts, Eric relaxed with a pencil and paper. "My drawing started as a kind of babysitting thing. If I was acting up at a dinner table, people would hand me a napkin and a pen and I would lose myself for a good two hours. Now it's developed a bit, but not that much! You do it to relax on tour, as there's 10% performance, then 5% soundcheck, and then the rest just spent waiting around at the gates of a train station or something. It would be nice to have a four track recorder to take around with me but I guess that's kind of tricky!"

Kid Koala, of course, is his mum's favourite DJ as the new album title suggests, though he's confessed in the past that she only really likes one of his tunes, the affectionate cover of 'Moon River'. It becomes clear that Eric grew up with Tchaikvosky, Louis Armstrong and the Beatles, but drew more and more from hip hop and comedy, the two becoming his primary influences.

"De La Soul, they were big for me, and I'd listen to their albums four or five times in a row while I was doing my homework. At that time I was really drawn to hip hop, but then I got into Monty Python and loved it so much! I mean, I've listened to the parrot sketch more than 'Me, Myself & I', and I've studied Monty Python more than most Public Enemy. I've always loved sound effects and music, and how they go together, and these were really great experiences as I could just put my headphones on and escape. What was really funny was that I knew all these things on tape, so it was a real shock when I realised they were visual and saw them on screen. They're a huge influence for me. In fact I blame the British for any humour that's in my music!"

Kid Koala comes across as an extremely modest person, a point borne out when he describes his talent for scratching as "more like a knack. It's a process, and I’m still growing, ever since I started at the age of 12. I'm extremely lucky, because I get to do a record, make a book, and these things feel very normal to me. I also get to have a house here in Montreal with a studio, and this one has air conditioning, which is very important as I'm melting in the heat right now!"

KID KOALA’S ALBUM ‘YOUR MOM’S FAVORITE DJ’ IS OUT ON SEPTEMBER 18TH ON NINJA TUNE. KID KOALA PLAYS A ONE MAN SOLO SHOW AT CARGO ON SEPTEMBER 20TH.