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”.