Beloved Swedish synth-pop duo Kite’s first single for Dais Records, “Don’t Take The Light Away,” captures the duo’s chemistry at its most urgent, thrilling, and apocalyptic.
Described as a song about “the war between energies,” singer Nicklas Stenemo’s wounded croon leads a rising tide of stabbing strings, pulsing percussion, and looming bass orchestrated by keyboardist Christian Hutchinson Berg, surging to a mass-chanted chorus both desperate and triumphant (“dance, let them dance into me / people versus people can’t see / hands should be holding hands”).
The song churns and burns until, suddenly, words are not enough – the song turns instrumental, smoke spills across the stage, and the melody becomes a battle cry. Like the best of Kite’s music, it fuses theater and catharsis into an anthem of universal yearning, born of “the struggle to keep a flickering candle lit in a very dark space.”
Since founding Kite in 2008, singer Nicklas Stenemo and keyboardist Christian Hutchinson Berg’s brooding fusion of cinematic electronics and anthemic pop has steadily elevated over the years into a stirring spectacle of passion, atmosphere, and communion, as immortalized in their 2019 performance at the Royal Swedish Opera backed by a 16-piece orchestra.
Although Stenemo and Berg grew up in small Swedish towns (Stenslanda and Tranås, respectively), Kite has carried them around the world, on extensive tours through dozens of countries. The elemental melody and emotion of Kite’s music resonates in every culture; their lyrics can be felt without being understood. This sense of potency extends to their recordings as well – Kite favor the EP format, having released six so far, in keeping with their “all killer, no filler” ethos.
2022 found the duo returning to the United States for a bi-coastal string of shows, sharing bills with other dark synth pioneers such as Front 242 and Cold Cave. But September 2023 marks a grand homecoming for Kite, as they will headline the largest show of their career at one of the world’s most breathtaking and beloved outdoor venues: Dalhalla. An open-air theater built into a former limestone quarry in central Sweden, it presents a fitting throne for Kite’s ascendence to the highest echelons of global synth-pop.
