(((O))) Interview: Cate Kennan

Shadows, the new album from Cate Kennan is a majestic and perfectly lo-fi, western inspired listening experience that takes you to a dreamlike plain from start to finish. Gavin Brown had the pleasure of talking to Cate about Shadows, the influence of film and her journey through music from the very beginning to now.

E&D: Your new album, Shadows, has just come out, can you tell us a bit about the influences on the sound and outlook of the album?

Cate: When I started recording it, I had gotten an optigan, so the first songs I wrote were on that and those initial recordings ended up influencing my production on the rest of the record, because they were kind of dusty and maybe a little bit repetitive, with chord changes, so when I recorded songs like ‘Reverie’, for example, I mic’d the amp rather than going direct into it to give it this more lo-fi sound and went with that. I think that just stumbling upon that sound influenced how I decided to produce the rest of the record, and I feel like that’s kind of how I work. It is hard because I know that the music I like influences me too, but I think that I wasn’t trying to go for a sound that I’d heard in other music, it was more like I was trying to stay integral to what was happening already.

E&D: You produced the album yourself. How was that experience this time around for you?

Cate: It was great. I love making music and doing sound design and engineering and stuff like that. I think that it took me a while to finish, because I moved five times in a year and a half, and so, for almost two years, I didn’t really work on the record that much, but I would say that it was like 80% finished, and then I actually ended up moving back to the place where I started the record, and I finished it in a month, so it was like it was like all I needed was some time and space.

E&D: Would you like to prosecute music for artist as well in the future?

Cate: I would. I haven’t officially. I’ve done music for film, which feels a bit like me getting out of myself and making something for someone else’s world. I am speaking with somebody now about producing some element of their record. I think I’d be interested in it. It’s one of those things that I think I would enjoy, especially with the film music.  Getting out of my world and getting into somebody else’s, and I think that, depending on the project, it’s an interesting way to keep exploring music,

E&D: How did your North West LA hometown, influence Shadows and  your music in general, especially with moving around so much?

Cate: I’ve never wanted to use this word, but it was kind of a coronavirus album, Like a lot of people, I was feeling really like time had stopped, and it was kind of like this surreal dreamlike existence, where I was back in the past, where I grew up, and I think that I was spending a lot of time, like when I was a kid, I would walk, I would go hiking a lot in my neighbourhood, and so I started doing that again. I think that that the neighbourhood is interesting. It seems a bit self-aware. There’s ranches and horses, and it kind of feels very quaint and old. They did use it to film old western towns in the 50s. It’s always been a place for people to remember this time in history, so it has this layered nostalgia aesthetically, I would say. I think that all of those themes really resonated with me at that time, and because of that,  became this overall visceral impression that I was existing in, and I think it influenced the record a lot.

E&D: Did it feel surreal going back?

Cate: Yeah, I think it did. Sometimes certain memories from certain time periods are more accessible to you, and I think that there was something going on with that for me, not only physically being back in that place, but it brought up a lot of things from that time, and then just being somewhere where you haven’t been for a while. For example, living my life in Los Angeles, I’ve had so many layered experiences there over time, but it’s almost like I’m, I’m not confronted with the nostalgia that often, because I’m always there. But when you go back to somewhere you haven’t been in a long time, you’re suddenly having memories that you didn’t even realise you had.

E&D: What led you to call the album “Shadows”?

Cate: I think that I felt that it was an impressionistic title, in the sense that I think of it as a ghost story. I think of it as a story about memories, and I think of shadows as these things that follow you around that you can’t touch or and that are always intangible and elusive but they’re always there. It also felt like maybe I was living  a shadow of my own life. It felt evocative to me in an almost poetic or musical way that l it just like made sense as an impression.

E&D: Was it a very emotional album for you to make?

Cate: Yeah, I think so. I think music has always been a way for me to process my emotions, ever since I was a kid, before I even knew how to record music. I feel like if I would make art, that was the space for that drawing and writing. I wouldn’t be surprised if every album felt emotional for me. In my waking life, I don’t deal with those things, and then making music is like a place for me to process that, I think.

E&D: How did you discover music growing up, and what led you to want to become a musician and an artist?

Cate: It’s funny, I think music was always there. My dad, he loves music and turned me on to things from the time I was a young kid. He loves the Cocteau Twins and Enya, he had all this music that I loved from an early age that I still love, like he really turned me on to things. Music was just always playing in our house as well, he plays guitar, so I started playing guitar, that was my first instrument, actually, and I was in a church choir growing up, which was pretty formative. I played drums for a little bit when I was fourteen. I’ve just always loved music, and dabbled when I was a kid. I never became really good at any one instrument. I didn’t have the discipline, but as soon as I was in high school and had Garage Band on my computer, I started recording music and trying to write songs, or make sound art. My dad had this sampler called a Yamaha QY70, and I would make these long form, almost like narrative musical stories with them. I would use the samples so it was like as if you were watching a movie with just the sound design, but then also try to put some music in there, and I later on got really into electronic music, and was using MPC a lot, and I remember at the time being like, oh, this is just like that thing anyway. For a while, I was really self-conscious about it, or didn’t want to show what I was working on to people when I was much younger, and I think at a certain point I gave a bunch of friends a CD that I made, and slowly started to show people things, and I played my first show in 2017, so the recording definitely came first, and then then moved to outward facing performing, making albums is more recent for me.

E&D: Has cinema always been a big influence to you as well?

Cate: Yeah. I think it’s funny, after I made my first record, this director, Giovanna Molina reached out to me, and she wanted me to, maybe score a film that she was doing, and I was like, Let’s just try it out. I’m not sure if it was something I would enjoy working on, but it was amazing to me, how I think watching the picture, the music almost just wrote itself. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get into her world because I’ve never thought about writing music like that, but yeah, I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed it. And ever since working on that, sometimes if I feel like making music, but I feel uninspired, I’ll just turn on a movie silently. They’re definitely tied together for me in a way that I didn’t even realise until recently.

E&D: Is that something you want to sort of explore more in the future?

Cate: Yeah, I love doing that. I’m working on two films right now, and it’s just a really,  fun way to explore different realms of what I’m into, especially with the sound design element, and world building with a synthesis emotions,

E&D: Going back to Shadows, did you feel any pressure following up your debut album with this second one?

Cate: I don’t think so, because I finished my first album in 2020 so, and so that year was so inspiring for me, because I feel like that, at least at the first part of the pandemic, I was just like, oh, I don’t have to work anymore, and I can just make these every day, and I finished that record finally, and  that album didn’t come out till 2022 because of all the pressing plant delays and all of that, which is probably for the best in retrospect. I think in a funny way I felt really safe making the next album, because no one had even heard the first album by the time I was halfway done with the second one, so it just felt really pure in that way. I hadn’t released an album before, so I still hadn’t had the sense of this next album. I’m the type of person who feels that kind of pressure, I’ll feel it with this new music I’m making.

E&D: Are you working on new music out there at the moment?

Cate: Yeah, not as much as I’d like to be. I really want to carve out time to only do that right now. I’m working on the films and working on my live set, and just rolling out this record, but I’m hoping at the end of the summer, early fall, to be able to just really dive in, and, but I’ve been writing songs, and I have a whole folder of some of them I wrote, like, a year ago or two years ago now.

E&D: Is making music something you’re constantly doing?

Cate: Yeah, it’s definitely something I’m constantly doing, and that’s an interesting thing I was thinking about the other day. I was thinking about this record, and about how I’ll be working on so many different recordings at once, and it’s almost like only some of them go together, and some of them, even though they’re all together, and they’re all coming from the same time, and probably the same influences. It’s like some of them really fit together as a cohesive, album. It’s like sound feeling. I don’t know what will be on this next one, but I’ll probably have some of the leftover ones from this one that weren’t included on it, that kind of thing.

E&D: Are you looking forward to taking the songs from Shadows into a live environment?

Cate: Yes, I’ve played the songs for a little while now, some of them, but I recently had a show where I played almost all of the record for the first time, and it’s cool, because I think that, for years, I’ve had this music, and I know what it means to me, but it’s funny how I have no bird’s eye perspective on it or idea of what it sounds like to people or what it means to other people, and I think that playing live is a really interesting way to. People will say things that you don’t expect at all, but it’s really cool. When I’m making an album, I feel so alone with it, and it feels like it exists only in my head, even though I can listen to it in my room, it still feels like it’s something that exists only in my mind, and it’s cool to hear other people’s reactions to it. I think about why I love music, live concerts mean so much to me, and there are these whole experiences, and it’s cool to be able to do that and make an impression and find out what that impression is. It just makes you feel more real.

E&D: What else have you got planned for the rest of the year that you could tell us about?

Cate: Well, once the record comes out, in July and August, I’ll be playing shows up the West Coast and on the East Coast, so I’ll be touring a bit, and otherwise just working on new music, working on the films.

E&D: Is there a chance that you may make it over to the UK and Europe at some point for live shows?

Cate: I really hope so. I love the UK, and I went to Glasgow two years ago now, and I loved it there. I want to spend more time there. That would, that would be something I’d like to make happen.