FEATURE: Spotlight: Kidä — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Lola Banet for ENFNTS TERRIBLES

Kidä

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THERE is a world of promising…

and interesting artists out there. Through my Spotlight features, I am trying to focus on as many of the best and most intriguing artists coming through. In this instalment, I wanted to shine a light on Kidä. This is an artist that I discovered fairly recently (though she has been making music for quite a few years now). Creating more experimental, less commercial music has meant that, perhaps, her name is not as widely known as it should be. I will bring in a few different interviews so that we can learn more about a fine young artist. In this interview with METAL, we discover more about the music and style of Kidä:

“Kidä, also known as Ava Leoncavallo, is the New York-based sound designer, composer, Red Bull Music Academy graduate and founder of the platform A Portal To Jump Through launches her new single The Garden. Her life is now dedicated to music and her experimental style and role as an alchemist of sound have circuited throughout fashion, art and advertisement, enabling her to work with brands like Dior or Prada.

I feel that your music is a very cool blend of '70s psychedelic rock with mythology inspired by your Egyptian heritage. Do you always find inspiration in the past? What inspires you on a daily basis to create new music?

I actually don’t feel like I have much control over my pool of inspiration – a lot of it is absorbed through environmental osmosis. Sometimes I walk around the city for a day and overhear a conversation or see an image that sets me off on a research spin for weeks on end. The act of music-making is more or less of way or organizing my thoughts. I think if I didn’t make music I’d be a writer, I have a strong urge to document ideas. When I stop doing that, I lose my internal compass. It’s a cliché but I actually need music to function properly. Otherwise, I imagine I’d be an insufferable tyrant because my head would just be on fire all the time.

Creating music from scratch seems really difficult because you are working with intangible elements. How do you create your music? Could you tell us your creative process?

I just follow a flow of attraction. I don’t know what genre my music is, but I’m not necessarily fixated on it. I trust that my different inspirations manifest in a way that pays homage to the music that I listen to and I think it usually does. I try not to dig up the grave of our past rockstar ancestors to steal their formula, we fight evolution by doing that. I’d rather rouse the living than summon ghosts.

Besides your music career, I would also like to talk about your aesthetic and your style because I feel that you have a very unique sense of fashion. What inspires your style?

Anything and everything. I love Jean Paul Gaultier, McQueen’s feral era, Galliano’s theatrics… But I think, above all, I feel most connected to Italian women’s philosophy when it comes to beauty, there are femininity and elegance but it’s laced with animalism and wildness. Tan skin, long athletic limbs, lipstick.

I think passion is what exudes style – whatever I am passionate about at the minute ends up being reflected through my style – whether that be romance, the Sahara desert, utility, insects, or anarchy. You will know what I’m thinking based on what I’m wearing. It’s my mood ring. If I’m wearing a dramatic cat eye it’s best to leave me alone. I’m either in heat or plotting revenge”.

I think that the thrilling and hugely original music of Kidä will reach a wider audience once we start to emerge more fully from lockdown. It must be quite constricting being in a restrictive state when this music needs to be delivered to audiences. As a creative, she must feel quite stifled and frustrated at the moment. In an interview with The Line of Best Fit from February, they delve deeper into her debut E.P., Burn to Make Glow:

“Kidä’s background in aesthetic sonic creation contributes to her experimental and electrifying rock. Now, stuck in snow entrenched New York, Kidä’s creativity has evolved into a more concentrated form: “I find I’m forced to confront myself so much because I’m in quarantine and not able to distract myself with other people’s energies. [Instead], I’m getting lost in dreams and research.”

Kidä’s debut EP Burn to Make Glow is based around her love for storytelling. She draws from Kate Bush’s propensity for moulding narratives into intricate songs: “I like creating images in my music; whether that’s lyrically or using these cinematic sounds and sound design to imbue a landscape…I was very inspired by Kate Bush. She would read or hear a story, think of something and then would want to retell it in a song.” The influences that seep into Kidä’s music range from her dreamy childhood reading of fables to having RnB and Y2K obsessions as well as the modular synths she uses for APTJT.

Teasingly, Kidä’s music cannot be pinned down. From the sparkling synths of ‘Comet’ to the spellbinding bass of ‘Kneel To You’, the music carries an air of mystique around it, becoming more enchanting with every listen. ‘Comet’ is also part of the le Beirut Art Relief Fund, raising funds for those affected by the explosion that caused devastation to the Lebanese capital. “I’m always trying to help where I can, and this is the best means I know possible. Tensions in the Middle East feel close to home - it’s something I’ll always want to aid because I have Middle Eastern family.” The project ‘How To Make A Portal To Jump Through’ raised funds for Syrian refugees, another cause close to Kidä’s heart: “My mother had a Syrian refugee living with her at one point. All these narratives from these trauma survivors, they’re very close to us”.

In concluding, there is one more interview that I want to pull from. I have dropped in a few songs through the feature. I would advise people to seek out Burn to Make Glow and listen to Kidä. She is an artist that will become more widely explored and exposed as the year progresses. This interview from ENFNTS TERRIBLES revealed some illuminating information:

“What does Burn to Make It Glow mean to you?

It was very cathartic, and this whole record was sort of a way for me to kind of rewrite my own traumas. The meaning of this album is the process of being in this place where burning but knowing that all of that is going to turn into something else. It’s ultimately what the album became.

Why did you decide to name the project after the final track “Burn to Make It Glow”?

It perfectly sums up the meaning that I’m trying to communicate in the most summarized way. (laughs)

We have a big admiration for your song “The Garden”. What is it referencing?

“The Garden” was a song about a breakup and growth. I was obviously in a place where plants grow, so I used it as a metaphor for wanting to forge ahead.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lola Banet for ENFNTS TERRIBLES

Does composing help you understand who you are as Kidä?

Naturally, they bleed into each other. I’m, for example, stewing in similar references. Like when I’m writing a score for Gucci with all those beautiful strings, I’m listening to all these magnificent classical songs that day. Naturally, that will be in my mind when I start to write a song for Kidä, and I’ll be wanting to use some middle-eastern strings like in the “Enter”, for example. So, of course, they’ll overlap.

Are your future projects going to sound very different from Burn to Make It Glow or will there be similarities?

It’s like when you enter a movie or video game, and you enter one landscape, there will be a new scene where you enter another landscape. It will be like this. It will still be me, and you’ll be able to tell that, but it will be a different world within Kidä world. That’s the best way I can describe it”.

To finish up, I want to bring in one more interview. When she spoke with Glamcult, Kidä talked about her blend of the modern and spiritual:

“There’s a continuous balance in your work of digital production to new-age spirituality. Where does this come from?

As an artist, it’s always intriguing to use whatever mediums are available to you- and a lot of it was due to quarantine. It creates freedom, the digital realm. I’ve always been interested in the surrealism of the 1900s and those landscapes really speak to me – the post-apocalyptic world- life but mutated. Within this world, everything is occupying a more dreamlike state and was able to do that through these states.

This manipulation of the physical to the digital and vice versa is surrealism in itself.

I’m just curious in a lot of different formats and its so exciting to work with different people.

Does everything start with this palette?

Yeah! When living in London, I was around a lot of designers and we intermingled. My passion came from there.

How does the energy shift between London and LA?

LA is a place I come to retreat to, I don’t need to see anyone when I come here. It allows me privacy, and I disappear into the studio and my friend’s homes. Freedom comes from this, as essentially im kind of hermetic. Especially this year. I’m so comfortable in this state, and that’s definitely what the video speaks to.

I think that Kidä is an artist with a long and very interesting feature. I really like her debut E.P., so I will look closely at how she progresses and where she heads. Discover a brilliant artist who has created a sound and look that is very much…