Head Like A Kite interview
Head Like A Kite has a new CD coming out, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to post the interview I did with Dave Einmo — one half of the band and a former one-man band. Head Like A Kite mixes up found and sampled sound into an electronica genre rounded out by guitars and drums. Einmo started the band by building his music around his old family films.
JM: How did you begin to incorporate the audio from old home movies into your music?
DE: : That came from a variety of things. One was that at the time I was working on the album, I was working on sound design for some movies, and I was also working on some soundtracks for some other movies, and in combining sound design with music for the films, it just became exciting how that was changing the film itself and how it was impacting the music that I was working on, so I became interested in trying to do that with my own music.
One day when I was over at my parents’ house, we were watching the old films and it suddenly donned on me what a treasure that I had, five or six hours of these Super 8 films that would be great sources to try and create some soundtracks to. Originally it was just going to be instrumental songs based on those films, but then the pop side of me couldn’t resist adding some vocals and hooks in there.
After awhile, it became this more pop-inspired but electronic feeling record based on those films – and actually taking the sounds from those films, because my dad had a sound camera and projector, so every time you would shoot something you’d be capturing the sound as well as the video. It was great to be able to sample that stuff and manipulate it and, in some cases, become completely different from the original sounds.
There’s a few where it’s more obvious — people talking — but less obvious is some of the ambiance of the beach or going to a zoo and hearing the animals in the background, or cars or things like that, that were really heavily manipulated with analog effects to make them sound almost like synthesizers or something that you’ve never heard before.
JM: Did you take the visuals into consideration when you used the audio?
DE: Originally, I was watching the films and creating the sounds at the same time, but once I had the clips into my recording system, then I started focusing more on the audio part because it wasn’t as important to sync things up like I was working on a film or something. The audio became my focus. The first few time while I was recording, I was actually watching the video at the same time, partially because of the inspiration, it helps take you somewhere different when you’re reacting to what you see, but also because I really wanted to get those sounds in the songs.
My dad shot that stuff for a long time, before I was born up through junior high. I didn’t end up using any of the older clips.
He did it up through grade school and then he decided, ‘Hey, I think I’ll try one of these video cameras that everyone’s talking about.’ It’s kind of too bad, because at the time that certainly seemed like the best thing to do and certainly more convenient, but the quality of the Super 8 films was so cool, just the way the film captured the light, that graininess, the saturation of color, it’s really cool to see that stuff. I actually want to try and shoot some new stuff, because I still have that camera.
JM: For new audio samples?
DE: More for visual accompaniment – I’ve got plenty of sounds to last me probably three or four albums, but I think it would be cool to take that same camera and shoot things that are happening right now and juxtapose it with stuff from 15, 20 years ago or more. I think visually, it would look really similar, it’s just the people in it would be older and more modern.
JM: How much conceptualizing of the sound did you do prior to actually recording?
DE: When I started I really thought about what I wanted to do. I had this opportunity to create an album and I can do anyting that I wanted with it, so I really wanted to think about what this album was going to sound like before I started working on it and really came up with a focus, to try and create an album that really pushed the envelope but would have enough hooks and melodies to draw in people who maybe wouldn’t listen to more experimental music. At the same time, I wanted the album to sound like a really good dee-jay mixing an indie band, so that it definitely has that indie flavor but taking it in a different way than most indie bands would approach it.
Basically, it was recording and looping myself and then, in mixing, none of those songs were ever really played from beginning to end, they were all created in different loops and then I would arrange those loops, similar in approach to the way a dee-jay would put together a bunch of samples that he or she found, but instead, I was doing it with my own music.
Eventually, it all became digital, but a lot of it was recorded on tape. Once it was recorded, then it was all bounced down into Pro Tools and into a digital environment. I didn’t edit any of the loops in an analog environment.
There were certain instruments, like the drums, for example, where I just love the sound of them being recorded on the tape. You can push drums harder and you can get this great saturation, similar to what you can get from film when you are filming with a Super 8. You get that interesting saturation of color and light that you can’t get in video. It’s the same, I think, with drums on tape. You can distort the mixer a little more and get a kind of trashy sound. If you do that in a digital environment, it sounds like a mistake.
JM: Obviously you had it mapped out to a certain point, but did you find yourself fiddling with the map once you got it all in?
DE: There would be a map and as I would throw things in I’d say to myself ‘This piece is pretty interesting but I bet it would sound really cool if I ran it through this Moog phaser or ring modulator and I would experiment with that and see what it sounded like. Sometimes it work, sometimes it didn’t. By my guess, 25% of the experiments I did actually worked, I had to throw away a lot of ideas that seemed like they would be cool, but when I listened back to them, they weren’t. But that’s the kind of album I want, I want to have the luxury of being able to experiment with things but not being too precious about it, so that if it didn’t work, even though I spent three days recording this part, it doesn’t work, so we’ll cut it and chalk that one up as a learning experience.
The nice thing about this is that since I’m able to do most of these things myself, if the direction wasn’t in an area that I wanted to go, I could quickly switch it around. When you’re in a band, sometimes for political and diplomatic reasons, sometimes you have to appease everyone and you end up jamming on these ideas that everyone knows aren’t really going to go anywhere, but nobody really wants to say anything. I’ve been in those kinds of recording sessions and some great stuff can come out of them, but they can also be kind of exhausting.
Head Like a Kite is an extension of that philosophy of trying to make things sound different from the way they do naturally, trying to make them sound more interesting, but at the same time, trying to keep your focus on melody.
JM: Is the process fun for you?
DE: I think it’s just how you use the technology. If you use Pro Tools to sweeten sounds and fix vocals that are out of tune or edit drums because the drummer didn’t quite play it right or punch guitar parts in to fix up that musicianship, that kind of recording I have no interest in at all. Using Pro Tools as a high technology sampler, that’s more interesting and it can be really powerful for that.
JM: Are you one of those kids who overdubbed with tape players?
DE: I remember taking old reel-to-reel tape decks to create loops and play along. And you could record yourself and create these long delays and then use that to accompany yourself, play something on the guitar and make that the rhythm section and then play along with it. It was a super low tech sampler.
I started out using traditional samplers that were about 10 years old, but it was just so painful to try and edit that stuff using the old samplers that it didn’t take me long to figure out that I really needed to do it on a computer to really do it right. I’m really glad I did, but I like the combination of technologies, using the older tape technology with the modern digital technology to get that kind of a sound. I think that type of approach lends itself to taking things to a different area than if you just did the whole thing in Pro Tools or something digital.
It’s funny, when you’re in the middle of the recording process, which can go on a long, long, long, long time, you get this tunnel vision and when you get out of it, there are all these albums that came out over the last year that you hadn’t heard yet because you’re so focused on your own music but that’s what touring is for, so you can catch up in the van.
In the last few years, I’ve been listening to a lot more instrumental hip hop and electronic stuff and I’m a little less interested in straight guitar music, though obviously, you can hear it on the album, I enjoy my guitars, as well.
JM: Are you often having to categorize yourself?
DE: Yeah, especially when it comes to record stores when they’re trying to figure out how to promote the record. A lot of the radio stations and record stores have these databases and you have to pick the categories. It’s like ‘gospel,’ ‘rock,’ ‘blues,’ wow, I don’t know, I’m not gospel, I’m not r and b. I guess for lack of a better term, the best way to describe is an indie band being mixed by a cool dee-jay. That’s category, unfortunately, isn’t available in most databases. I’m working on changing that.
JM: What does your live show look like?
DE: We use the films that we used to create the albums, we bring those on tour, we project them behind us while we’re playing the song – there’s two of us, Trent Moorman plays primarily drums and sampler and keyboards and does some vocals and then I play guitar and synthesizer and sampler and vocals. Even though there’s two of us, we use a lot of technology and samplers and other instruments to fill the sound out so that it really sounds like two bands, we make a pretty big sound out it.
Trent’s using an acoustic drum set as well as an electronic drum set and when he’s playing the electronic drum set, he can trigger different loops from our sampler, so it’s kind of like taking the approach of a dee-jay. When he’s playing drums, he’s also thinking like a dee-jay, he’s triggering samples and bass loops and I’m doing the same while I’m playing. You end up with live instrumentation that’s accompanying different loops.
I recorded the album first and then I tried to figure out how the hell I was going to play the album live. I tried a few different configurations with a few different people and Trent and I really hit it off, he can really do so many different things at one time, he was the perfect guy for it. He’s on the new album which won’t be coming out till fall.
JM: Where did the name Head Like a Kite come from?
DE: It’s because I always blank out. When I was recording the first album, I would end up recording really late, a lot of times I was recording till five in the morning, after doing that for three or four nights, it would get surreal and loopy and my head would start to feel like it was floating above the studio. I heard the phrase somewhere and thought ‘that’s a perfect description of how I’m feeling right now’ and it kind of describes the music too. All the time on tour, things happen that only a complete imbecile would do and I’ll just say ‘Well, now you know how I got the name’ and just laugh it off.
JM: Is it odd for you, showing personal movies while you’re performing for people?
DE: I grab out different parts of the films, it’s not like there’s this one reel and I’m going to show it from beginning to end. The films were already pre-edited, but it wasn’t because of anything embarrassing, it was because I wanted to have stuff that was really impactful visually.
My dad’s great at shooting but inevitably, all three minutes on a three minute reel aren’t going to be something that somebody in Boston or North Adams are going to want to watch unless they were in my family, so I picked the visual stuff that was really interesting that anyone would enjoy and focused on that stuff.
The only time I’ve ever been nervous about showing it was on the first tour when we came back at the end of the tour and played Seattle and my parents came out to see us. I was wondering what the reaction was going to be because there are shots from their honeymoon in Florida and there are shots of all the family personal stuff. They really loved it, so that made me feel a lot better.
My family is really important to me and when I’m on tour, it can be tough being gone that long. There’s something kind of nice about being in Cleveland or in PittJMurgh and looking back and seeing your mom or your dad or your sister on stage with you. That’s kind of fun, even though it’s a much younger version of them.
JM: How far can you go with the home movies?
DE: The second album is more focused on sounds that I recorded while touring all over the United States during 2006. The album has a really cinematic feel, because that’s the kind of sound that I love, but instead of focusing on films from my childhood, it focuses on the sounds I recorded on tour and it has different sounds from different cities that are mixed into the songs.
I thought a lot about it. I was concerned if the second album repeated the same theme, then it would feel lazy and a little bit schticky. I wanted to do something different but I definitely did want to continue to include ambient, outdoor sounds because I think it’s just really intriguing sounding. I love combining the sounds you hear outside everyday with music.
I really enjoy where you’re taking field recordings from the outdoors and almost using them as an instrument, mixing them into the songs, it gives a nice cinematic flavor when you get done. It can be really gimmicky and forced, though, so you have to be really careful the way you do it. Done right, it pulls you out of a typical listening experience and makes it feel like you’re listening to a movie.
It’s kind of like the first album, which was field recordings through a camera, and this one is a little bit more straight ahead. It’s higher fidelity. It turned out cool, there are all these sounds from all these different cities and as you listen, it feels like a bit of a sonic road trip around the country.
I thought a lot about it. I was concerned if the second album repeated the same theme, then it would feel lazy and a little bit schticky. I wanted to do something different but I definitely did want to continue to include ambient, outdoor sounds because I think it’s just really intriguing sounding. I love combining the sounds you hear outside everyday with music.
I really enjoy where you’re taking field recordings from the outdoors and almost using them as an instrument, mixing them into the songs, it gives a nice cinematic flavor when you get done. It can be really gimmicky and forced, though, so you have to be really careful the way you do it. Done right, it pulls you out of a typical listening experience and makes it feel like you’re listening to a movie.
It’s kind of like the first album, which was field recordings through a camera, and this one is a little bit more straight ahead. It’s higher fidelity. It turned out cool, there are all these sounds from all these different cities and as you listen, it feels like a bit of a sonic road trip around the country.
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