Today we’d like to introduce you to Jens Bjornkjaer and Katherine Mills Rymer.
Jens and Katherine, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Jens: I come from Denmark, and have been playing music from the age of three years old, starting with the violin. Then by 12, I changed instruments to saxophone and jazz constructs in general. While in Conservatory in Denmark and the New School in New York, I began to realize that being a ‘jazz cat’ exclusively was like living in a museum. I then began to become very interested in digital forms of music and different instruments and symphonic composition. This leads me to become a multi-instrumentalist and producer, so I could control, make and understand how to make music in a complete way. In order to push for new exciting things, whilst blending and stretching genre.
Katherine: I come from a small town outside of Cape Town in South Africa. Soon after high school, I went to New York where I was accepted to the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York, completing the program I was then signed to acting management in Los Angeles and everything was set up in a specific way that I thought I had sealed off. And then four months later having just moved to LA, my father died. This radically changed my life trajectory. Even though at the time, I was unaware of how tectonic this moment was. Essentially six months after acting school I was in a band with my Danish fiancee writing lyrics and melodies on instinct. I remember looking around a bit terrified at the other actors I encountered as I felt like a hermit alien. It took me a while to accept but I realized I am more interested in image-making, records and art stuff and fabricating and making in general than exclusively as an ‘expresser/ interpreter’ (if that makes any sense).
Jens: Yeah, she is very instinctual. When I asked her to sing for the first time, it was at her mom’s house after her dad’s death, and she thought it was a bit cliché to sing on her then boyfriend’s record. But I pushed and then it tuned out great, and we realized we had an artistic language on top of our romantic language that just unfurled.
Katherine: Yeah and then Jens left to do some work in Denmark while I stayed in South Africa while I tried sorting out various and terrible visa things and helped my mom. He left me a microphone which I attached to a wine bottle and I made a few songs while lying in my old bedroom. Also, a month after my dad died Nelson Mandela had died, so South Africa was in this huge and weird surreal grief and weirdness, and I was in my own mirrored strangeness. It was a trippy time.
Jens: Totally. We couldn’t get back into the States because of your visa, so you came to Denmark in the middle of winter and we loaded up my old Fiat and took a European road trip ending up in a Swiss chalet with instruments and made the first record Disco To Die To.
Katherine: Yeah, and then finally we made it back to LA. And the rest is history, and another two records (Acute Feast and Voyeur)
Has it been a smooth road?
Jens; Look, America is a REAL place. You only know the true depth of the industry and life out here, when you live here. People can explain it and you can read it, but its a wild, insane place full of blinding hope and death valleys of despair… And only after you have been here for a few years do you suddenly understand. As a Dane coming from a heavily governmental supported arts system, it’s like cold and shocking water to see how commercial all of it is here. The major thing to understand is its pretty binary here for all artistic expressions: commerce or nothing,
Katherine: Ja, I mean everyone comes here or wanted to come here (pre COVID) since it’s like the ‘centre of the world’ in terms of the commercial mixed with arts. But if you are a European or arty weirdo from a faraway land, LA takes a moment to understand and by moment, I mean at least three years to fully grapple with. The power of the ‘DOLLAR’ and that hard and almost religious concept of it here is a challenge at first that gets better with knowledge.
Jens: Yeah, the value of music is less. As the years go, it’s almost near impossible to make money outside of advertising for commercials or writing scores for film.
Katherine: I call it the age of the image. Image first then ‘invisible’ music second. No one (myself included) hangs out and wraps themselves around records anymore.
Jens; So that’s the challenge. Making music that is special like our music, when there is no incentive to do so besides from that we want to make the music and images around it. Even at our most commercially accessible many people still find our music challenging.
Katherine: Yeah, if I could have a dollar for every time someone said ‘unique’ in a Los Angeles accent, I would be wealthy.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
Jens: I am concerned with making music that no one else makes. I want the music to stand up to pressure in 200 years. I think very grandly in regards to my music-making and output. I come with a subset of various skills that allows me to blend and discombobulate genre, I’m quite intellectually focused when it comes to this because of my classical background and training. But not only do I seek this newness, complexity inside the music, I want it to move people and have an impact not just with music nerds, and that’s where Katherine comes in.
Katherine: Yeah, I ride my emotions like a rodeo clown. But seriously, ja I am emotionally dexterous and I was born without skin in some way and understand the world through my animal senses (why acting was a natural first stop for me). I joke I’m like a truffle pig, I smell out things blindly and then go and have a good hard cry.
Jens: Yes, her live wire emotions are also why our visuals, videos and lyrics that Katherine makes are so special because of this abundance of intelligence mixed with emotional availability.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Jens: Difficult question! But I think maybe it’s different person to person. It is a good place for opportunities! I mean it is the centre for film and television so in terms of business it seems right. But since COVID all the tables are looking a little different,
Katherine: Totally! Look it’s hard to just come to LA with like a suitcase and a dream. I mean take one look at Hollywood Boulevard or casting rooms in west Hollywood. I know I cherished becoming an artist in New York. But I do love the nature, space and driving here! I love the weirdness, its craggy corners, its dystopia vastness its wealthy lawns, all of it are interesting to me and feeds what I write about and make.
Jens: Yeah, but maybe it’s better to just come here quickly in terms of setting oneself up commercially.
Katherine: Yeah true. It’s all so dependent on circumstance and luck and self-confidence.
Jens: I think you should talk about the Los Angeles ” Yes!”
Katherine: YES! this is maybe something to improve on. I don’t know if anyone controls this (obviously not) but… LA to me is the land of the ‘ultimate yes’. It is smart business maybe to be upbeat and not closing the door to anything, to always hedge the various bet, but detrimental to the whole long term vibe of the place, I think. I would rather a cold shower of NO than a yes that never happens (and I know if anyone reads this in LA, they will know what I mean). I’m super used to it now like a seasoned steak and don’t get to annoyed by it, but I wonder how it would all be so different. If Angelinos just cut to the point, politely and kindly.
Jens: Very Scandinavian.
Katherine: Yes! It’s attractive and shit too! I won’t lie. It’s hard to write a no email or to ” no” someone in the face. But there would be less time sucking in my opinion, more work with better quality would be made.
Jens: Yeah I agree.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/o_future_/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ofutureband/
Image Credit:
All photographs, images, art work by O Future
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