Review: Head Like A Kite
With his musical project Head Like a Kite, Seattle musician Dave Einmo is taking technologies old and new and melding them with his personal memories to create a sonic scrapbook in the music studio and a multimedia event for the road. Einmo chose the name Head Like a Kite to describe both the music he writes and performs and his general mental demeanor when making his music into the wee hours of the following day.
“I would end up recording really late, a lot of times I was recording till 5 in the morning,” said Einmo, “and 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.”
He heard the phrase somewhere during all this and decided to adopt it as his own since it captured not only his music, but almost every aspect of his daily being.
“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,” said Einmo.
A complete imbecile would likely not come up with the concept — nor the execution — that Einmo has. It was while he was working on soundtracks and sound design for a few films that he begin to realize the similar technological wealth he had in his own life and that he could translate into his own music.
“I was over at my parents’ house and we were watching the old films,” said Einmo “It suddenly donned on me what a treasure that I had, five or six hours of these Super 8 films would be great sources to try and create some soundtracks to.”
Originally, Einmo planned on instrumental songs based on the family films, but couldn’t resist adding vocals and catchy hooks. Eventually, the work morphed into a pop-indie work with a definite electronic feeling, bolstered by the use of audio from the home movies that was creating scores for. Digital manipulation created new soundscapes and even instruments to be added to the songs.
“There’s a few where it’s more obvious, like people talking,” said Einmo. “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.”
Einmo began composing the music while actually watching the films and grabbing the clips he wanted to use and, soon after, actually recording the music that was to germinate into the final songs.
“I was watching the video at the same time partially because of the inspiration,” said Einmo. “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.”
The films were all shot by Einmo’s father on a Super 8 camera. The earliest films were made before he was ever born and continued on through to his junior high years, when he switched to a video camera.
Einmo understands the convenience, but laments the aesthetics that were lost in the switch to modernity.
“The quality of the Super 8 films was so cool,” said Einmo, “just the way the film captured the light, that graininess, the saturation of color, it’s really cool to see that stuff.”
Einmo’s process was not a normal one for a band — he likens it to a DJ doing a remix of already realized songs. Einmo would create his own musical loops to be mixed together into songs later.
“None of those songs were ever really played from beginning to end,” said Einmo.
Einmo would record his loops onto analog tape and then transfer them into the computer. While he didn’t edit the loops on tape, he did take advantage of certain strengths of the medium that were only clumsily replicated digitally. In the process, Einmo was learning more about the relationship between what he was seeking in the sound and what he had in the films.
“There were certain instruments like the drums that I just love the sound of them being recorded on the tape,” said Einmo. “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. 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.”
When Einmo began conceptualizing the work, he knew he wanted a clear idea of the sound he would end up with, something that would, in his words, “push the envelope but have enough hooks and melodies to draw in people who maybe wouldn’t listen to more experimental music.”
This meant a dual creative plan. On one hand, everything was eventually mapped out and all he really had to do was follow the plan. On the other, he wanted it express the fun of experimentation and discovery that he loved. He allowed himself to throw things in and take some time with them, even if they didn’t always work out.
“By my guess, 25 percent of the experiments I did actually worked,” said Einmo. “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.”
This creative process that Einmo adapted — and the resultant sound that cross genres — had made it hard to categorize when it comes to promotion to record store and radio stations, which need to find a niche for the sound via industry databases that help them categorize.
“For lack of a better term, the best way to describe the music is an indie band being mixed by a cool DJ,” said Einmo. “That’s category, unfortunately, isn’t available in most databases. I’m working on changing that.”
In live shows, Einmo hauls out the family films to accompany the stage presentation, which is him on guitar and cohort Trent Moorman on drums and both multi-tasking on various samplers and keyboards. Einmo grabbed out different parts of the films to accompany the music — mostly the segments that he used in the creation of the songs.
“My dad’s great at shooting,” said Einmo, “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.”
These films continue to play a part of his creative process and presentation, but Einmo doesn’t want to get stuck in a rut, so he continually works to expand upon them. One plan is to use his father’s original camera to shoot new footage, updating the images to include the present versions of the people in them, as well as Einmo’s children.
Einmo and Moorman have already enacted the second plan as they work on their next album. While on tour, Einmo recorded ambient sounds of all the cities he visited and is now incorporating them as part a sonic road trip that will also include his home movies. In this way,
Einmo is challenging his creativity by combing two huge parts of his life that have been traditionally separate.
“My family is really important to me and when I’m on tour, it can be tough being gone that long,” said Einmo. “There’s something kind of nice about being in Cleveland or in Pittsburgh 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.”
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