Emmett Kai On His Newest Album, "Whale Milk."

Independent artist and producer, Emmett Kai, is releasing his third full-length album, “Whale Milk” on June 28th. “Whale Milk” was born out of creativity and passion, with Kai focusing on creating the album for himself. From start to finish the full album is an electric listen, each song hooks and sustains listeners until the last note ceases. Kai’s music seems to be transcendent, almost impossible to focus on anything else besides listening to whatever grasps your attention, whether that is an instrumental break, poetic lyric, hypnotic synth or captivating acoustic guitar rhythms.  His two latest singles, “Get A Bag,” and “We Used To Be Alright,” are both featured on the upcoming album and were released in the past month. Hold tight for “Whale Milk,” it is well worth the wait. 

Your newest album, “Whale Milk,” comes out on June 28th. You just said that this album is an “attempt to contain my imagination into an album without the pressure of selling records, going viral, or working for anyone but myself.” Could you talk about the inspiration for the album, and do you feel like it's signifying a new era for you as an artist?

I haven't released a record since 2020, (because of) obviously the pandemic, traveling back and forth between the coasts and trying to figure out a new home and stuff like that. And I think that I finally kind of locked into a nice groove upstate where I was able to just slow down and not have to think about all the pressure of selling myself, selling records, and just doing something that I love. And I also was fortunate enough to fall into a role of producing records for other people, so that really just helped with the realization of not selling albums and just doing it for the art.

Photo via Owen Labate

The first song on the album is “Holy Nitro.” I loved the beginning of that song and how it just kicked off. I thought it was such a great way to start the album. How did you choose what order to put the songs in, and when you do so, do you imagine it as a storyline or is it kind of more at random?

Yeah, definitely not like a storyline by any means, but I think that it kind of starts off with more contemporary songs that I have written recently within the last year. But then I - sprinkled in some songs towards the end that I actually wrote when I had first moved to New York in 2017. Those were just demos that I always thought were finished and just felt great. There's not really a storyline. Coming up with the track listing was really just me obsessing over how every song flows into the next, and having a balance of vibes and the way that things kind of bounce off of each other. I love listening to albums, so when I'm making an album, I don't want to get bored, but I also don't want it to be harsh all the time or the same song. I mean, it took me a long time to make this album.

For tracks three and four, the titles are “Borderline Pegasus Disorder,” and “Felta Creek Survival Camp,” which I thought were both just really interesting names, and the whole album features really fun names of all the songs. Where did a lot of the titles come from when you're naming your songs?

I wish I had more definitive answers for these kinds of things, but I really don't. I think that when I named that song, I just thought, it's kind of hectic. It's kind of just bizarre, and I like that about it. And so I guess I was kind of thinking of borderline personality disorder in a way of, not that I have that or I have to deal with that, but I was thinking about that. But it's a bit more imaginative than that. It kind of was like this creative psychotic break or something. And then “Felta Creek Survival Camp,” actually was when I named it that, it was a whole different song. It took a totally different shape. And Felta Creek was where I grew up in California. It was a creek that I grew up on in Northern California, and I always wanted to name a song or an album or something after that because it means a lot. I grew up without any internet, and I didn't grow up in the city.

I grew up out in the sticks, and I didn't really have cultural anchors. And I also didn't really have the internet for a long time. It just kind of was like this idea of this kid or this guy that lives out in the boonies. And then also the juxtaposition of meeting a girl or a partner that is the opposite. It's interesting because I kind of had this idea of how the two people can meet and really fall in love with each other's differences and be inspired by that. But at the same time, you can kind of replace each other's past with each other. One person finds, “oh, actually you're opening up my mind more than anybody has ever done. I'm from the city and I want to slow down.” And then the kid me in that position would be like, “I’m too slow. I want to speed up.” So you meet at some point, and it's kind of like this accidental side quest type of thing where you can meet and inspire each other to actually move apart at some point, which kind of is a heartbreaking concept, but that was the idea.

Your song “We Used to Be Alright,” came out today, and one lyric I really liked from that song is “something I noticed is that you see through heaven's eyes.” What inspires a lot of your lyrics? Do the lines just kind of come to you, or do you write what you feel pairs well with the music?

That's a good question because I'm always insecure about my lyric writing. When I work with other artists, they write intentionally for something. I just did an album for this friend of mine, Jordana, and we wrote the album together upstate and writing with her took a year. So we did seven different sessions over the course of a year for a week each time. And I would write with her, and we would create this album together. She would write very intentionally what she was trying to get across. She kind of grounded me a bit. But I guess with those lyrics, I was intentionally trying to write about the idea of walking through the world as if it's kind of falling apart. I was thinking about how even just walking, here I am in my own head, I almost felt like there was a camera following me. Not literally, but I'm walking here and there's like all this crazy shit just happening. And in my own life, it kind of feels sometimes like I'm walking through this world and things are just falling apart. And I mean, not even just of the times, I just mean kind of baseline. That's kind of how it feels in my head sometimes.

Photo via Owen Labate

The seventh track is “Get a Bag,” which is currently released, and this is the second shortest song at 1:03, next to “Heart on Fire Interlude,” which is the shortest. I kind of interpreted these two next to each other in a sense, to kind of break up the album and almost re-hook the listener halfway through. What was the reason behind putting these two tracks back-to-back?
I mean, yeah, you're nailing it. I don't want the album to be boring. “Heart On Fire” was the break, that was the interlude. When I made that 30-second thing, I was just like, “I can't even make it past this. I'm just done.” This is the first time that I feel like I've ever written an album that was a great portrayal of my brain. It really is. It's very chaotic. Sometimes it's kind of almost unpleasant and harsh in a way. So I think that it was good for me to be able to feel that freedom of putting stuff in and the track listing maybe can portray a little bit of that.

Well, part of my next question was going to be that I just felt like this album specifically was super involved. Each song was a whole journey for the listener. What does a typical songwriting process look like for you? And is there a process, or does it just change depending on the song? 

There's definitely a process. I'll usually start off with just guitar or keys, just creating melodies. And then I hum to it and just come up with a vocal melody, and then I get that baseline down. And I like to start usually during the afternoon or midday. I usually start at midday because I like to do things outside during the day, physical things, gardening or yard work, whatever I can do outside. I would like to do that first. And then I usually will go to my studio and I'll start a new song. And then to be totally frank, also, I usually will smoke tons of weed. I always start off sober, and then at some point I'll roll a joint and smoke and just kind of have a panic attack real quick. It kind of shakes things up and makes me feel not so sterile. I hate feeling sterile.

Do you want to talk about the album cover art?

So the album's called “Whale Milk,” and I came up with that name over the last several months. I kind of forget how I came to it, but I found this really strange article from the 1800’s of scientists doing studies on whale milk. And I just found it super bizarre. I'm a new painter, and I started painting all these things that resembled whale milk to me, like yellow toothpaste and fishiness and kind of just different awkward things. I reconnected with a family friend of mine, this artist Dave Dexter, where I'm from. He is still really well known where I'm from, from Sonoma County (California). It's kind of a crazy story. I was in LA at one point, and I was staying with a friend who is friends with Dave Dexter too. And he pulled out these plates, almost like Italian blue and white terracotta, and then he would paint on them. There was this painting of this man, and underneath it said, “It Taste Like Chicken: Jeffrey D.” And I was like, “oh my god, that's Jeffrey Dahmer.” It was a painting of Jeffrey Dahmer, and it makes you feel awkward. So I took it home and I put it on my wall, and I kind of fell in love with the awkwardness of it and how strange it is. And it brings up a lot of things for people when they come over to the house. They're like, “oh, that's kind of weird.” It's hanging up in my guest bedroom. So when people go to sleep, there's Jeffrey Dahmer looking over your shoulder. It makes you kind of feel weird. So I reached out to him (Dexter) and I reconnected with him and I pitched him this idea. And he was like, “yeah, I'll do that.” And so I sent him the album and was like, “I kind of want to call it “Whale Milk.” What do you think? Do your thing.” He took a couple weeks and he called me back and he said, “Hey, so this is what I'm thinking. What if we did life-size cutouts of a whale with a bunch of boobs and then you had these big nipples, and then you were connected to the whale?” And he executed it properly, what the album cover is, but actually it's a photograph.  So he cut out these big wooden cutouts and painted me and painted a whale. He actually took a photograph – he took a hundred different photos – and I just took it into Photoshop and just rearranged it. And then I took toothpaste and I made, where it says whale milk, in real toothpaste. Literally whale milk has been described by many scientists as having the consistency of fishy toothpaste.

You grew up in California and then you lived in New York in the city for a little bit. And now you're upstate. So what has been the biggest difference between the different music scenes and how do you feel like that fuels you creatively?

Well, I'm from the Bay Area, California, from outside the Bay. We're called the North Bay, so it's like Sonoma County. The music scene out there is  a lot of punk, DIY. It's a lot of house shows. But for me, I remember growing up in California, it was a lot of rap, which is still some of my favorite music ever. It's so unique to Northern California. But then at some point, I started going out in bigger towns nearby, and it was these house shows that were just the best shit ever. It was all these bands. And a lot of the time it would be, it'd be like five bands. Some of them would be on tour, but all the local bands would just be swapping players. They'd all be in the same bands, and everyone's in eight different bands, and they all play shows all the time. And it's this subculture that everyone loves and respects. And there've been a few people that I can think of that have graduated past and kind of branched off. So that's like where I'm from. But then when I moved to New York, it felt like the fucking renaissance of bedroom pop. To me, that's just what it seemed like. It was like everybody was listening to indie pop music that literally just felt like you were in somebody's bedroom and they were just making it on a laptop and had a guitar, and that's what it was. That's what New York started as.

I see it a little differently now. There are a lot of bands in New York and it's a lot more artist-heavy. I feel like there are a lot more artsy people who make stuff all the time, and they're just creative. Everything is so rigid and hard here. So then you move upstate and there's not a whole lot of music industry. I didn't move out there for the music industry. I moved out there to get the fuck out of everything. It was Covid. I moved out there to totally calm down. We get some cool touring bands out there. But it's really not a super popping culture as opposed to LA. I'm going to be moving to LA this year.

Photo via Owen Labate

 What do you anticipate that's going to be like, especially for your music and you as an artist? 

I think it's going to be really beneficial for my career. I mean, I go out to LA three times a year, and I'm out there for a long time and I'm working with people. I have a really good network of friends and producers and collaborators out there. And I want to be close to my family. Honestly, just personally, I love New York with all my heart, but right now, at this time, I'm over it for now. I might come back at some point. And then also at the moment I need to leave to re-appreciate anything. It's funny because moving here is rad, it's cool. When I did it, I remember telling myself, “oh yeah, you got to just at least do two months. If you hate it, you can always move back.” It's not like I owned anything. I just moved out here with a suitcase. And then I ended up staying here for I think three and a half years before Covid hit. It was the best three years of my life, but it was also really hard. It is really hard to live here.

Can you just give an insight into your upcoming plans, especially in LA? Do you plan to produce there? Do you plan to do some shows? 

 I am kind of looking down the barrel of I don't know what I'm going to do with my life right now. I've been just doing this my whole life and traveling and doing music and all this shit, and I do need some security at this point in my life. It's a little refreshing to know that nothing matters and that I can just do whatever I want. But I think for the future, my base plan is to just be in LA, be closer to my family, develop my relationships with my friends that really love me there, and work on music as much as I can and focus on my career as a producer. I think LA is going to be nice for me to be in a comfortable place for a while, and maybe I could settle down there at some point. I just want to be chill, happy, healthy, low anxiety, understandable, and be able to make shit. 

Follow Emmett Kai on Instagram and Spotify to keep up with new updates. His latest album, “Whale Milk,” is out June 28th.