It's no secret that Denmark’s Kahala is at the forefront of production-centric bands and an avant-garde twist on Jazz, blues, and pan-African contemporary music, having earned their stripes through both the lucrative individual careers of it's core members, and through their expansive, world-fusion discography. Fronted by guitarist Niclas Knudson, drummer/percussionist Emil de Waal, and the venerable producers Spejderrobot and Rumpistol, Kalaha's reach is as global as their influences, making them a contemporary psychedelic mainstay on and off the stage.
Their most senior release, the Mystafa LP, combines psybient palettes, organic timbres, and an array of guest instrumentalists and vocalists into a scintillating, culturally effusive album. It showcases the height of their respective skill sets as a band, and concurrently channels a seriously hypnotic array of rhythms and grooves that are nearly impossible to ignore. In celebration of Mystafa's release, Kalaha subsequently commissioned a music video production of the track “Laga Luga”, featuring a dance-centric edit courtesy of Bos Laflar.
In tandem with the U.S. debut of the music video, the Rust took the opportunity to pick apart some of the production choices and guest appearances that tied together the Mystafa LP, as well as discuss Kalaha's broader experience as a group.
The Rust: The Kalaha style has a distinct global feel; how did the band come into that motif? Was it a natural pull, or a flashbulb moment?
Emil: The global feel of Kalaha was definitely a natural pull coming easily to the band as a result of the influences of the very different musical backgrounds of the four founding members. Finding inspiration in West Africa, India, Turkey, New Orleans, indie rock, pop, electronica, jazz, techno, funk, blues, 80´s new wave, [and] house, the four musicians fluently and respectfully move between each other´s musical inspirations. It seems that the creative inspiration keeps coming, and who knows what will be next?!
The Rust: Can you dive into the beginning of Kalaha? What drew you together in the first place?
Emil: Niclas Knudsen went to school together and have played together on and off since 1990 in different jazz and pop music projects. Spejderrobot and I have worked as an experimental drums/electronica duo since 2008 and released four albums together. Still, it was actually Copenhagen electronic music festival “Strøm” and the Danish jazz federation “Jazzdanmark” that brought us four together for the first time in 2013 for a week of teaching workshops and playing an improvised concert on Strøm Festival. The concert was recorded in a basic stereo recording that was actually released as our first album Hahaha.
The Rust: Does the approach to writing and producing Kalaha music differ significantly from your individual projects? Is there a cross-over of ideas, or is it a unique entity entirely?
Niclas: Kalaha consists of 4 very different artists and because of that, the music is a very strong and unique mix of personalities and differs from all of our individual projects.
The Rust: Mystafa spans a wide range of tempos, modes, and ideas; did you have a specific vision in mind when the album's production began?
Niclas: The productions are always very open at start, then we follow up on all ideas and then slowly the vision starts to appear. This release shows what a big artistic range the band has.
The Rust: What can you tell us about some of the album's collaborators?
Jens (Rumpistol): There are 20 musicians and vocalists on this album, so this is going to be a long answer!
First and foremost there is Hilal Kaya, who has been our "fifth member" for a couple of years now. Hilal has a Turkish background but lives in Denmark which makes it pretty easy to meet. Saz-player and songwriter Orhan Özgur Turan first told me about Hilal when Orhan and I were writing "Çok Küstüm" together. Soon after I did a recording session with her and she turned out to be a great singer and easy to work with, so it was only natural to continue that collaboration. For the new album we've done 4 tracks with her ("Özgürüm Ben", "Vivo", "Lagaluga" and "Eymen"), two of which she wrote the lyrics for, and we've also had her perform live with us a dozen of times. We were supposed to perform live with her at Boom Festival 2020 which sadly got cancelled due to COVID.
There's also a track on the album with Moussa Diallo called "Jigi Fa". Moussa is originally from Mali, but has lived in Denmark for more than 40 years now. In Denmark he's considered a bass legend and has played as a session musician on more than 100 titles as well as recording albums of his own. He has a sweet voice too so when we were looking for a vocalist for the desert blues track "Jigi Fa" he felt like an obvious choice. The last two vocalists are both "native Danish"; Uffe Lorenzen who sings on "Dans Det Op" is considered the Gandalf of Danish psychedelic rock and has released music for 35 years with projects like On Trial, Dragontears, Spids Nøgenhat, Baby Woodrose and more. Hjalte Ross is a gifted young singer/songwriter from the town of Aalborg who has often been compared to Nick Drake. Last year, Hjalte released his fantastic album "Waves of Haste" (feat. Nick Drakes old engineer John Wood!) and he's featured on "Hurt You Once Again" with the lovely Maria Køhnke on backing vocals.
Worth mentioning is also the kora player Dawda Jobarteh and the oud player Bilal Irshed who both plays on "Jigi Fa". And duduk player Serkan Yildirim who created the epic intro and outro sounds on "Özgürüm Ben". Last but not least my old high school buddy and now award winning animation director Peter Lopes is singing on "Vivo" and my daughter and one of her friends are singing back-up on "Vivo" & "Truffle Soil". This is also the first album where everyone in the band is actually singing on the album!
The Rust: Can you tell us about some of the instruments and production processes that went into the album's creation?
Jens: The press release states that it "is an album that seeks to bring people together across cultures, genres and nationalities." I'd like to add “COVID-19 restrictions” to that sentence because it was created at a time where it wasn't even possible for us to be present in the studio at the same time. So files where send back and forth between the four of us and the collaborators. The mixes also changed hands several times between me and Mikael (Spejderrobot). It was a pretty strange experience but actually also quite fun to try. As Emil once said: "In a way, we've taken all the journeys we should have taken on our canceled tours through the music instead." It turned out to be some really cheap trips to Brazil, Mali, Turkey, Aalborg and outer space!
Production-wise, we were really keen on including more live percussion so apart from playing the drums Emil had to get busy with his shakers, agogo bells, darbukas, etc. Our guitarist Niclas played a lot of bass guitar on the album, which really makes sense when you're messing around with genres like funk and psych rock. Apart from the before mentioned non-western instruments like oud, kora, duduk and saz/baglama, there's also a fair bit of synth work on the album: Mikael has been getting heavily into modular synths the last couple of years so there's a fair amount of that on the album, and I'm also using my modular on the album (the outro of "Mystafa") as well as my trusted old Wurlitzer and my old analogues: Juno-60, CS-10, AcidLab's Bassline (303 clone) plus a bunch of soft synths (mainly from the Arturia bundle). We mixed everything in the box but did use some outboard effects like the good ol' Space Echo. The hardest thing was to make all the different pieces fit together because it's bound to get messy at some point when you're trying to blend so many genres and musicians on one album. However, I must admit I really love the bands eclectic approach because it keeps the creative process open instead of ending in a situation where everyone's shooting down each other's ideas because they don't fit into a certain [framework].
The Rust: Can you talk a bit about your live setup? How do you achieve the ideal Kalaha performance in concert?
Mikael: Overall I would say that preparation is key: being on top of the material and having the mental capacity to perform while being relaxed and confident. Secondly there needs to be some kind of fire or restless energy, since we depend on improvisation and going unexpected places as we perform. On the technical side, we are pretty dependent on everything being in sync with the computer on stage. A lot of Jens’ gear syncs to the computer, also Emil receives a click track in order to lock in.
The Rust: With nearly a year having come and gone since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, what has your experience been at home? What has your experience been as a band?
Mikael: Obviously the pandemic has been a mixed bag for most of us. On an individual and practical basis we have all tried to make ends meet. Homeschooling, isolation mixed with concerns for the future and the wellbeing of our close ones on one hand – on the other: a lot of quality time with our children and closest family, having the time to take a walk in the nature and a sense of time being slowed down. As a band we decided to take a look on the material we already had – and we soon realized that maybe this was the time for us to make a bunch of new songs (and that we would actually have a pretty decent album if we just wrote a few more songs). Not playing concerts suddenly gave us the opportunity to focus on creating new material for the band.
The Rust: When we first interviewed Jens three years ago, we learned a bit about the typical experience of musicians in Denmark. What has been the collective experience of Danish musicians throughout the last year?
Mikael: I think many musicians have had the feeling that culture and cultural content in general has been of great importance during the lockdowns. As a collective we have been watching series, listening to albums, reading books in order to stay sane. Hopefully this is something that we will collectively remember and appreciate once we have put the pandemic behind us.
The Rust: Have you begun to plan for an eventual return to stages and conventional concerts? What's your view of that horizon like at this point in
Mikael: We have already had a lot of shows either cancelled or moved to a later point in time. Our release concert in Danish National Radio’s concert house, was originally scheduled for the beginning of February, but has been rescheduled to May the 2nd. This could very well turn out to be too soon. We will see. Otherwise we have a bunch of concerts during the summer that we still hope to be able to play.
With vaccine rollouts and mixed-success lockdown campaigns making their impact across much of the world, there's strong signs that the return of live music is underway across North America and much of the European Union. Naturally, this will translate in the eventual return of Kalaha to stages across the European circuit, reinvigorating this Danish supergroup of stalwart musicians and producers. Until that day comes, there's still quite a mountain to climb to reach the veritable end of the Covid-19 pandemic, and that means plenty of time to stay cozied up with some choice studio music. If “Laga Luga” and the diverse stylings of Mystafa set your vibe accordingly, make sure to take the time to explore the entirety of Kalaha's variable catalog of world-class fusion music.
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