They Stole Our Heads: An Interview with Mountain Head
Kyle and Ben Hannah share fascinating backgrounds, both as
individual musicians and as the duo Mountain Head.
They grew up on music and created their own recording studio
during college. That gave them the opportunity to learn what they liked and
didn’t like as musicians, producers and engineers. They produced music, scored
films, and dabbled with voiceovers and cartoons.
When Ben was 21, he began studying Indian music with a guru
from India and well as studying instruments like the sitar and tabla. Kyle
developed an interest as well, and said it’s something they still begin every
day with.
They made their way through a variety of bands, from
Southern rock to psychedelic soul, but always found themselves better off as a
duo.
“Hence the journey up the mountain where we left it all
behind,” they said. “Mountain Head emerged.”
Their story as Mountain Head does begin with a mountain, and
goes like this:
The mysterious duo wandered through the wasteland and arrived at a mountain, which they scaled. At the top, they discovered a shaman who changed the brothers' lives and way of thinking forever.
Descending the mountain, they channeled Johnny Cash, Flavor Flav, and Billy Gibbons. Dressed in black denim, rocking solid gold grills and long beards, their eyes were obscured by heavy shadows from the brims of their black hats.
The most startling change was their music, full of subterranean grooves, plump cavernous bass lines, and a jangly, grungy guitar. Their sound blends psych-rock, alt-rock, and elements of electro-pop and jangle pop into unique and potent sonic concoctions.
Mountain Head's goal is to travel to your city and steal your head by means of mesmerizing vocals and contagious melodies. They're skull bandits, but polite ones, because after they steal your head, they give it back to you.
According to Mountain Head, the only way to hold on to your head is to lose it.
“We Stole Your Head” is their debut single and first
appeared at the end of a pre-Mountain Head show in Toronto. The intro came out
of nowhere and before they knew it they had recorded it on their phone and took
it to the studio.
“We had the verse, melody and chord progression, and then
Ben played the hook line in the chorus which also became the chorus melody, and
like a bolt of lightning the words ‘We Stole Your Head’ just kind of flew out,”
Kyle said. “Immediately both of us started laughing because the song was super
catchy, and it truly does steal your head. This song was really the starting
point to Mountain Head, where we started to develop the sound, the doubled
vocal, and the groove based songs, almost like we were making a hip hop beat
with our instruments. ‘We Stole Your Head’ evolved into its own thing once we
flushed it out of our system and we followed that thing to its finality.”
The story of Mountain Head doesn’t end here, but the
beginning of their story is just as attention-grabbing as their music. The
Hannah brothers have been committed to this project since making their way up that
mountain, and are clearly on the right path to success – one stolen head at a
time.
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