FEATURE:
The Digital Mixtape
PHOTO CREDIT: Ian Gavan/Getty Images
Este Haim at Forty
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THE amazing bass player and guitarist…
PHOTO CREDIT: Lea Garn
with HAIM, I wanted to mark the upcoming fortieth birthday of a remarkable musician. Este Haim plays alongside her two sisters, Danielle and Alana, and she turns forty on 14th March. The Los Angeles trio are one of my favourite groups. They released their acclaimed debut album, Days Are Gone, in 2013. Their most recent album, I quit, came out last year. I have never seen HAIM live, though when they come to London, I shall try and get along, as I really love their music. Este Haim is also a fantastic and revered composer. Before coming to a mixtape featuring some of her compositional work and some brilliant HAIM tracks, I want to feature an interview from Spitfire Audio that was published in 2023:
“It's not all industry accolades and ice-cold limoncello though. Today Este is not on tour with Taylor Swift, recording a track for the Barbie soundtrack, or writing the fourth Haim album. She is in her living room in LA, drinking orange juice and recovering from a bout of low blood sugar brought on by her type 1 diabetes. In 2013, she fainted on stage at Glastonbury. Now she wears her condition on her sleeve, ready to educate anyone interested in finding out more. Including you, dear reader.
“We can wax philosophical about type 1 diabetes,” she continues. “I can give you all the info you want about blood sugar and glycemic index, but I don’t know if the Composer Magazine audience would want to hear about that.” In a way, she’s right. What I wanted to talk to her about was drum machines. And self-doubt. And archery.
Despite the morning setback, it hasn’t taken long for Este to hit full stride. She is gregarious and funny - a little sarcastic, a little self-deprecating, and generous with both her time and her stories. “I'm a real sucker for sonics,” she admits with characteristic pith, of the non-citrus variety. “If I could, I would go through snare tones for weeks.”
Hunched over a synthesiser or playing the guitar with a paintbrush are not images one might immediately associate with the rambunctious live performances of Haim’s resident bassist and self-avowed cheerleader. Este Haim is bridging worlds that don’t often look one another in the eye, but listen to tales from her childhood and it’s clear she always had a proclivity to break the mould. Her favourite Disney films are The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty … and Robin Hood. More on him later. For now, a little history.
Drum machines may not have run in the family, but music did. Este’s father was a drummer, her mother a guitarist, and it was something of a given that one-by-one the Haim sisters would have instruments pressed into their young hands. On the drums from age two, and upstaged by Danielle on guitar by age eight, Este (or “Depressed-y”, as her father called her at the time) was initially against the idea of playing the instrument she’d go on to make her own.
“My dad was like, ‘Why don’t you try playing the bass?’ And I was like, "Girls don't play bass. What girls play bass?" And he was like, ‘I know just the thing.’” Hours later they were at Blockbuster renting Talking Heads’ 1983 concert film Stop Making Sense. “I watched it and I saw Tina Weymouth play and I was mesmerised, transfixed, as an eight-year-old,” she enthuses. “I think partly because I thought she looked like Princess Peach from Super Mario. She was having the best time and I was like, that’s what I want to be.”
Throughout our interview, Este’s cultural references bounce between high and low like a vintage synth, just as happy to discuss Real Housewives as she is the work of Wim Wenders. In a matter of minutes, she’s run the gamut from her fated soccer career (“Sport? Not my thing! Performance? Absolutely”), her love of E.T. (“I wanted to be best friends with Elliott”), playing Brazilian carnival drums (she says there’s a video on YouTube, but I couldn’t find it), classical music (“I was really big into like Tchaikovsky”) and the joy of foley (“it looks like being a kid in a sandbox”).
At one point she jokes that “other than the drums, I think the cello is like the most beautiful, sexy instrument ever.” Especially in the hands of Arthur Russell, I offer. “Oh my god, the Arthur Russell of it all,” she exclaims. “The sound that he got out of his cello, and the textures and the timbre...” She trails off. “I wasn’t hip to Arthur Russell until late. I got to the party around 18 or 19. It blew my head off.”
It is a truth generally acknowledged that people conscientious enough to think they’re late to the party are usually bang on time. With almost a decade of band experience already to her name, Este took a degree in ethnomusicology with the intention of “studying the beginnings of music and where music came from”. She played sitar, she played tabla, she played gamelan, she sang in a Bulgarian choir. “I decided to look at it from an anthropological and sociological standpoint and learn how music worked,” she explains. Because why not?
The pop covers performed in charity concerts with her family may have grounded Este in the mechanics of a certain kind of songwriting, but there was something about Arthur Russell and Kate Bush, who she also became obsessed with at college, that flipped her interest towards production. “The world is your oyster in the studio,” she says. “Drum sounds, synth sounds, bass tones, those three things are my strong suits.” Sonics, atmosphere, levels, and mixing; are all concepts she now draws on more than ever in her work for film
There’s a lightness to Este’s manner which could be misinterpreted for frivolity, a charge that has been levelled at Haim in the past from the music industry’s largely male vibe police. It should really come as no surprise that an artist of her stature has such a wealth of musical knowledge, but pop stars are rarely afforded the luxury of complexity, let alone vulnerability. Este Haim is comfortable with both.
In 2021, Este was approached to score a Netflix drama Maid, about a woman rebuilding her life after an abusive relationship. Housebound by lockdown and unable to tour Haim’s third album Women in Music, Pt. III, Este jumped at the chance to try something new, despite the risks involved.
“I was like, I've never done this before. I'm a musician, I know I love music, I know I love music in film, I've hung out with Ludwig Göransson a couple of times, sure [she laughs], but the truth of the matter is I don’t know whether or not I'll be good at it. I'm going to put my best foot forward, and I’m going to work hard at it. I went on YouTube and tried to find every video on music composition for TV and film as I possibly could. I remember day one before meeting Stray [collaborator Christopher Stracey], I was like “OK Este, come on Haim, you gotta brush up!”.
It’s safe to say that as far as Haim is concerned, she has succeeded. When it comes to composing, however, Este is the first to admit that she is still finding her feet and was initially just pleased to discover how much she enjoyed the process. It’s also possible that being a rock-musician-turned-film-composer is, in its own way, something of a radical move.
“I think with time people have become more accepting of the idea that you can do both, or just do what you want,” she reflects. “Like, who gives a shit? This isn't a dress rehearsal. I don’t want to be on my deathbed and be like ‘fuck, I wish I'd done that’. That's kind of how I've always lived my life. I'm pretty fearless in that way.”
If Este Haim makes it sound easy, that’s because she has had to work for it. “I feel like I got my ten thousand hours by the time I turned eleven,” she says. “Every artist goes through bouts of self-doubt and imposter syndrome, but I like to think that as time goes on those voices get quieter,” I ask her whether being a beginner again in the world of film composition has allowed her to approach the task with something like intuition. I mention a book I was given recently on Zen Buddhism. To quote its author, Shunryo Suzuki: “In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few”.
When I write about HAIM in the future, I will discuss i quit and how their music has changed. The brilliance of their work and what acclaimed players they are. However, this is all about Este Haim, as she turns forty on 14th March and I wanted an excuse to write about her. A truly exceptional musician, composer, songwriter and human, this mixtape is her brilliant work as a composer and as one-third of HAIM. It shows that she is a truly staggering…
MUSICAL talent.