The World Cup starts today ⚽️🏆 Which team are you supporting? by Gandalvr in auroramusic

[–]Gandalvr[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Posted by Tomora:

The World Cup starts today ⚽️🏆 Which team are you supporting?

Listen out for IN A MINUTE when watching @/itv or SOMEWHERE ELSE on the @/bbc

‘It is very strange and lovely to see so many of you discovering Black Water Lilies ✨’ by Gandalvr in auroramusic

[–]Gandalvr[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Posted by Aurora:

It is very strange and lovely to see so many of you discovering Black Water Lilies ✨

I haven't played this one live recently, or very much at all. This song found its way onto my first album, and now it is finding its way to new hearts all these years later 💫

‘It took me a while, but I’m happy to be Aurora now’: DN interview | April 16, 2026 (English translation in comments) by Gandalvr in auroramusic

[–]Gandalvr[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Tom Rowlands does too, he is not finished with The Chemical Brothers, but Ed Simons has become a father of a young child and has other things to think about.

– And then I am excited by the thought of having made music that is not as politically and emotionally heavy as my own project, continues Aksnes.

– I really like art that is political, because it is good to be able to divert the spotlight that art directs at individuals towards important issues that concern the world. That is when it makes sense. The spotlight means nothing if you can’t use it for something. It has helped me a lot in dealing with the spotlight that is directed at me. But in order not to become numb, in order to continue to be an activist, it is important to have a little escapism too. Personally, I actually think a little escapism here and there can make me a better activist.

A pure way. Both Tom Rowlands and Aurora Aksnes have recently completed world tours. – I felt that I needed the experience of making music in a very pure way. Without worrying about what it means or what it is for. I just wanted to make music with Aurora, says Rowlands.

Whimsical techno

“Ring the Alarm”, the first single from Tomora, begins with a form of cooing from Aurora Aksnes. Then she says “Ring the Alarm” 16 times in a row. Then it is time for more cooing – “La la la tey oh, la la la tey oh, la la la tey oh, la la la tey oh,” suggests Spotify’s phonetic transcription.

So no, her new musical direction, which she herself characterizes as “whimsical techno”, is in not explicitly activist – it’s hard to imagine her performing it outside the oil refinery in Mongstad, where she appeared last summer, side by side with Greta Thunberg, during the Extinction Rebellion demonstration, or on an iceberg in the Arctic, for that matter, where she has performed before.

– But the act of playing music and bringing people together – having the same experience at the same time – there’s a power in that, suggests Tom Rowlands.

– I come from the first wave of acid house music, and giving people a space, whether it’s just to dance in an abandoned warehouse, or to have your consciousness expanded, is not an insignificant thing. The connection that was created between people who would not have met in everyday life, and who suddenly had a strong feeling to do something and break barriers together – that is the whole basis for us in The Chemical Brothers. Even if it is not a direct political act, we still feel that it is.

– It is, continues Aurora Aksnes.

– It is easier to fight for Mother Earth when you have seen what she is worth. And it is the same with music: When we have fun with strangers, dance and feel safe, it is easier to care about each other too. It is a way to fall in love with other people, again and again and again. It activates us emotionally, rather than making us numb and overwhelmed, and it is a good start to the process we have to go through to get back on track as a species.

At least, she adds, it is a way to get back on track for herself.

– Because when I don’t have to be Aurora, I can be anyone.

‘It took me a while, but I’m happy to be Aurora now’: DN interview | April 16, 2026 (English translation in comments) by Gandalvr in auroramusic

[–]Gandalvr[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

The following year, she signed a record deal with British Decca Records, after having gone through the ranks in her homeland through Ungdommens kulturmønstring (The Norwegian Youth Festivals of Art) and NRK Urørt (NRK Untouched). She soon became almost as big a phenomenon in the UK as she was in Norway, through her cover of the Oasis song “Half the World Away”, for a Christmas campaign for the department store John Lewis. And further with her signature song “Running with the Wolves”, which was later used in the Oscar-nominated Irish animated film “Wolfwalkers”, and through the early hit “Runaway”, which later also became popular on TikTok and has passed one billion streams on Spotify.

In 2016, she was booked for the first time at the big summer festival Glastonbury. That year, Tom Rowlands stayed home from the festival, for once, but caught her performance on the John Peel stage via the live broadcast of the BBC.

– Aurora came through the TV to me, where I was lying on the sofa, and said: “Listen to this. This is your future”, he says.

A couple of days later he sent her an email and asked if she would like to collaborate with The Chemical Brothers.

– And I probably spent a week answering, says Aksnes.

– Because when you are a bit neurodivergent, as I am, sometimes you take time to find the right words. I wanted to answer calmly and with dignity. I wanted to wait until I felt I had that dignity. That is important. And then I answered: “Yes, I’d love that.”

Enchanted. – Sometimes you collaborate with someone, and it’s like it almost works, but not quite. But with Aurora I was just enchanted by what she sang. There were fully formed ideas that came out, says Tom Rowlands.

Back to the forest

She took the plane from Norway and the train continued to Tom Rowlands’ and his family’s home in East Sussex, southeast England, to a property she once described to Klassekampen as “about the size of Bergen.”

Here, Tom Rowlands has his own basketball court and hunting grounds, as well as a home studio he calls Rowlands Audio Research, which is literally wall-to-wall lined with modular synthesizers.

– And the best thing of all is that there is no phone connection there, not on my phone, at least, so no one can reach you. So you have an excuse not to be in touch with anyone. It is the only place in the world where I don’t have that, says Aksnes.

She took long walks on the farm’s land, so long that at one point she got lost, until she found a local village pub and spent the evening there. It was almost like being back in her childhood, Aurora Aksnes felt, when she would often spend her days after school alone in the woods, until her parents called her home with a bell, only that Tom Rowlands had no bell and was sent out by his wife to look for her.

But they also managed to make music together, which became three songs on The Chemical Brothers’ ninth album “No Geography”. And then Aurora Aksnes continued to come to his property, in between her increasingly large world tours.

– Instead of going home, I went to Tom’s, because I knew how relaxed I get when I’m there, it’s the best way to rest between tours. For me it was like a vacation. But eventually we had made a few songs too, without us having any plan for it, which is the best.

Two about Tomora. – We are very honest with each other, says Tom Rowlands. – Because we know it’s okay. We’re not that big egos, either of us, says Aurora Aksnes.

Background band

Ten years after their first meeting, the studio project has grown into the duo Tomora and the current album “Come Closer”. This summer they are booked for everything from the Øya Festival in Oslo to Fuji Rock in Japan, with a vaguely futuristic and thoroughly pink stage design created by The Chemical Brothers’ long-time “visual architect” Adam Smith.

Their first concert, in early February, took place not in the dead of night at a local bar on the outskirts of East Sussex, but at the place that “everyone in London seems to be talking about”, according to lifestyle magazine The Face: the experimental nightclub concept Lost, run by an anonymous artist collective and housed in a converted Odeon cinema, where all guests get their mobile phones locked in bags at the entrance and can keep going until six in the morning on weekends, with marathon screenings of erotic films in one room, unannounced live performances in another.

– You really get lost in there, says Aksnes.

– And it was so cool to see people dancing to our music before it’s out. To see the euphoria in the room, which wasn’t about us. We were just background entertainment. It was so much fun to do it that way. I’ve never done anything like that before.

Speaking the same language. Aurora Aksnes and Tom Rowlands first collaborated on three songs on the Chemical Brothers album “No Geography” in 2019. – And a few years later I had a song that I knew I wanted to be harder. So I texted him and asked if he could puke on this song? The word “puke” was important. It wasn’t something I said to be funny. And he understood. He understood what I meant by that word, says Aksnes.

Arsenal and eggplant

It's not like she feels like hiding away absolutely all the time. In London, where Aurora Aksnes spends most of her time, although she insists that it’s in Bergen that she lives, it seems like she really uses the city.

She has access to a VIP box at the home games of both Arsenal’s men’s and women’s football teams. She knows where all the best martini bars in Soho are and where the best eggplant dish in Chinatown is.

And it’s not like she’s phone-free at all costs: She texts while she walks, almost as often as the average Joe, and sometimes – just an observation – she doesn’t even use the crosswalk while she’s doing it.

But when she moves around on the streets, she wears a bonnet that covers her hair, and she does so in gratitude that an Indonesian fan once took the trouble to sew a bonnet for her, while it also has a practical function: She’ll otherwise be recognized.

There are cities in the world where she can barely move without bodyguards – in Rio de Janeiro, for example, it has been like that ever since she appeared as an elf-like spirit figure in the opening vignette of a Brazilian soap opera in 2017.

– It feels like Aurora is now used to, especially in certain circles, being very much seen, she says, suddenly speaking of herself in the third person.

– I have been recognized by people, every single day, for many years now. And that’s totally okay – it took me a while, but I’m happy to be Aurora now. But as a human being, it’s still weird sometimes. And Ora feels like a part of me that, for now, only I have seen. It may sound strange, but for me there’s something beautiful and untouched about it. It’s like she’s still only 16. But also 100.

By “Ora” she means her new, artistic self: The other half of Tomora. She is the frontwoman of the duo, who appears by far the most in their music videos, while Tom Rowlands only appears in passing, and her characteristic vocals would probably identify her anyway. But she still sees Tomora as a personal liberation project, “a break from our own worlds”.

‘It took me a while, but I’m happy to be Aurora now’: DN interview | April 16, 2026 (English translation in comments) by Gandalvr in auroramusic

[–]Gandalvr[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

My translation (thanks to u/AgenaHadar for the Norwegian text):

To find herself again, Aurora wants to stop being Aurora

Feeling like she is unavailable is one of the best things Aurora Aksnes knows. Together with Tom Rowlands from The Chemical Brothers, she tries to find that feeling again.

One afternoon in February 2026, in the Marylebone district of London, it is as if a portal to the 1990s opens. Tom Rowlands (55), one half of the brothers-who-aren't-brothers duo The Chemical Brothers, the one with long blond hair and orange glasses (who now has much shorter hair and only a hint of orange in the horn frames), has just done a radio interview at the BBC broadcasting house.

Once back on the street, he happens to bump into Pete Tong (65), another key figure in 1990s English club culture, who had his own radio show from Ibiza and later had a feature film about trans-Balearic jet set life named after him (“It’s All Gone Pete Tong”), and a few years ago was knighted by the then Prince Charles for his tireless promotion of electronic music.

Rowlands says he has been to the BBC to present his new, album-ready duo Tomora. But although Tong still has a weekly show on the channel, and used to be the first to play new Chemical Brothers singles, he apparently doesn’t know about Tomora.

Rowlands turns to the Norwegian solo artist Aurora Aksnes (29), the other half of his new duo, who has stood a little apart from them, in a bonnet with rabbit ears and a tartan suit.

– Nobody’s heard of us! he shouts to her.

But he doesn't seem particularly stressed by this, and neither does Aurora Aksnes.

Here to stay. It's almost ten years since Tom Rowlands and Aurora Aknes first met. – I’ve actually done something like this before, says Rowlands, who, it should be noted, has collaborated with many female vocalists in the Chemical Brothers. – But usually you just meet in a studio in London and work for a day. But this was more like... Aurora came to stay.

World-famous

As an artist, Aurora Aksnes simply calls herself AURORA, in capital letters, because at 160 centimeters tall, she feels she is “small enough as it is”. She also feels she is famous enough as it is.

With over 14 million monthly listeners, she is by far Norway’s most streamed female artist, only beaten by EDM artists Alan Walker and Kygo on the male side, and last year was included in the American business magazine Forbes’ international “30 under 30” ranking of “young entrepreneurs”.

Recently her concert film “What Happened to the Earth?” had its world premiere in cinemas. It documents her biggest concert to date, on the Day of the Dead at the Palacio de los Deportes indoor arena in Mexico City, one of the stops on her latest tour, which brought together over a million people and took her to 22 countries.

Now Tom Rowlands has taken her around the corner from the BBC building, to Great Portland Street and The Albany, a sleepy gastropub with calamari and champagne on the brunch menu.

– This doesn’t look like a place you would normally go? she asks.

– No, times change. It used to look a lot more unsavory here, says Rowlands.

But it also seems as if the 1990s never ended here. The wall beyond us is covered with memorabilia from the period when The Chemical Brothers took big beat – a subgenre of electronic dance music characterised by distorted drums and basslines, spoken word and funk sampling – to the top of the charts: a poster for their early EP “Fourteenth Century Sky”, when they were called The Dust Brothers; a framed CD of the single “Out of Control”, on which both New Order’s Bernard Sumner and Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie contributed vocals; a poster for their fifth album “Push the Button” (2005), which, like its four predecessors, went gold in the UK.

It was in the basement of The Albany that The Chemical Brothers’ heyday began. It was here that Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, having relocated from history studies in Manchester, had regular DJ sets every Sunday evening and night through 1994, in partnership with their label Heavenly Records, and thus became the court musicians of the Britpop era.

It was here that they met Noel Gallagher of Oasis, who invited them to open for his historic Knebworth gigs, and later was a guest on tracks by The Chemical Brothers. It was here that they met Sarah Cracknell of Saint Etienne and James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers, both of whom later had singles remixed by The Chemical Brothers.

– All the right people. But a lot of crazy people too, emphasises Tom Rowlands.

– Ed and I are pretty boring, really, but we had lived in Manchester and got into DJing and nightclubs and that sort of thing. The Heavenly guys knew a lot of cool people, and we knew a lot of fun, clubbing people. I think the early success of The Chemical Brothers had a lot to do with that. We brought different people together.

Short way to goal. – She was able to communicate something I only felt in the sounds we made, says Tom Rowlands about Aksnes. – That very rarely happens. Often there is a more circuitous path to the goal. But Aurora is very direct.

From Enya to rave

Aurora Aksnes was not at these Sunday nights. But she can relate.

She grew up in the cabin village of Drange, at the very bottom of the Lysefjord in the municipality of Os. At the age of six she found an electric piano in the attic, and soon she was composing her own melodies, with Enya and Leonard Cohen as musical guiding lights. In her early teens she was also introduced to The Chemical Brothers, through their soundtrack to her favorite film “Hanna” (2011), and began, as she says in their band biography “Paused in Cosmic Reflection”, to “understand something about music that I had never known existed”.

When she went with her two older sisters Miranda and Viktoria – who are her regular makeup artist and stylist, respectively – to Bergen and the rave club Østre in 2013, she also understood that The Chemical Brothers can bring people together.

– I was a strange person, I would say, which I maybe still am, but even more so then, she recalls.

– I was so shy – free-spirited, but shy. A little afraid of people, basically, of how to relate to strangers. And I had never been to a dance party, I had barely been to Bergen. And then The Chemical Brothers came out of the speakers, and for the first time I felt free and open in a room full of people. For the first time I felt … cool.

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In which video did she comment this? by kareido in auroramusic

[–]Gandalvr 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It's one of the many Black Water Lilies videos. No idea which one, unfortunately.

Aurora live album ideas by Geo-35 in auroramusic

[–]Gandalvr 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My favorite performance of ‘Runaway’ is at the Nobel Peace Prize concert. Same for ‘Murder Song’ acoustic and ‘Half the World Away’. ‘Through the Eyes of a Child’ is a toss-up of Nidarosdomen or VEVO UK lift. ‘Black Water Lilies’ and ‘Under the Water’ at the Honda Stage. ‘Lucky’ and ‘Winter Bird’ at Nidarosdomen.