Max HeyraudAhead of their National Stadium date on 24 October, TOMORA’s Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers and Aurora reflect on the spontaneity of their live shows, the freedom of improvisation, and the thrill of discovering just how far their collaboration can take them.
We sat down with TOMORA, the powerhouse duo comprising Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers and Aurora. Though even “powerhouse” feels like an understated description for a pair whose collective accolades include six Grammys, an Oscar nomination, a place on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, a BRIT Award, a Mercury Prize nomination and four Spellemann Awards, to name but a few. Yet, for all their past triumphs, TOMORA seems to exist outside of them. Stripped back from past successes and heartbreaks, the pair have come together to create music for the primal necessity of being creative, being alive, being human.
One album down, with COME CLOSER, and a newly unveiled EP, CELEBRATION, which drops tomorrow, TOMORA are taking their project across the globe, from Japan and China to their live debut at Coachella, with upcoming dates in Berlin, Glasgow, Dublin and beyond. Despite the scale at which they’re operating, the pair have maintained a grounded, almost DIY approach, transforming vast festival grounds and cavernous stages into close-knit, intimate spaces. It’s an opportunity for two of music’s most lauded mavericks to experiment, improvise and workshop their music in real time, a creative freedom they’ve long been itching to embrace.
They arrive in Dublin next week, playing the National Stadium on 24 October for POD. We spoke to the pair remotely, tuning in from Norway, England, Berlin and Dublin, for a conversation that mirrored the project’s own philosophy: unguarded, exploratory and unafraid to wander down unexpected paths. We dug into what it means for two established artists to feel as though they’re starting all over again, and the enduring love affair with music that brought TOMORA to life in the first place.
The project was initially born without the idea of making an album, or even necessarily having an end product in mind. It was more about enjoying the process and seeing where it took you. Was it freeing creating in that headspace?
Aurora: We are so lucky to be doing something we are both good at, and also something we enjoy so much during our time here on Earth, and I think it’s such a gift. After so many years of touring, making music under a certain name, at a point it almost belongs more to people now than it belongs to you. It’s very nice when you just remind yourself that music is also just enjoyment. That feeling when you’re in the studio and it feels like you’re on fire, and you feel so in touch. It’s a very magical thing to create. It’s so magical to me, to write with no purpose, no name, not for anyone, just for the sake of making music, I think all people should do that in any art form. Just to remember that it’s a thing that makes you happy in general as a human. And that’s what we did.
Tom: We make music. We muck about. It was flowing. Not that all the music should mirror the enjoyment you have in making it, but even if it’s very heavy and emotional, it’s still that feeling you get. Making music is a feeling that I think we both still enjoy: the chase and the excitement of trying to make something that we haven’t really explored before. That’s TOMORA, I think, for both of us. We’re exploring different things we could never do, kind of, on our own.
Have you been able to carry on that initial impact from when you first started making music together, that feeling that was very fresh and exciting, as the project has become more established?
Aurora: We’ve just kept on making music because it feels good. When you’re touring and experiencing the project live for the first time with people, then you start to realise what more do you need and want from that experience, so it’s fun to keep making music while we’re touring. We made two tracks somewhere in between Turkey and Norway which are coming out soon. We were in the van in the Czech Republic trying to record some screaming vocals with an iPhone, which was fun.
One recurring word that came up in past interviews about the project was “fun”, which was quite oddly refreshing. You weren’t talking about the conceptual ideas or the project as a whole, but that the basis of this was having fun, and I wanted to have an insight into what those sessions are like.
Tom: As I was saying before, the fun doesn’t necessarily mean the music is fun. Sometimes it can be, but it’s more just the excitement in the studio and the surprising element of working with Aurora. I’ve been in the studio for nearly every day of my life, and to still find someone to collaborate with and be able to make something that neither of us could have imagined. The studio feels like a magic place. Something beyond our understanding can happen, and the fun is in that, the chase of the unexpected. Aurora is a very curious person.
Aurora: We’re both curious and playful, and we like to dance. I think it’s so important to not forget the fun in the things you do; people can feel that. I think there is, like, a frequency of the human emotion in there, when you put anything into the world, to make sure whatever was felt at the time in the room, when it’s something good and positive, I think you can feel that, and I think it’s important. It makes it human. We prefer to interact with things that are human and not perfect.
Coming back to something you said earlier, Aurora, you mentioned that, to a degree, the audience owns the name for your solo project, and I was wondering what it’s like starting a new project as two artists who are very well established in the music industry and each have their own set of fans. With that comes expectation, which is in stark contrast to maybe the last time you started a project as relative unknowns. What’s that like now, good or bad?
Tom: The expectation is a privilege. It’s nice that people are listening and they’re really engaged with what you make. That’s hard to earn from people over a long time of making music, and I never take it for granted. We started this project without a name, and there was no expectation of the thing we were going to make. It felt very much like a year-zero kind of thing, which is a really exciting place to be. I love the idea that we were fooling around in this studio making crazy music, and then it becomes this real thing, and last week, we were, like, in China and Japan playing this music. To build this thing from nothing and make it something tangible, and to make people feel something from it, has been a significant thing.
I’ve read you talking about “cohesion” rather than “similarity” when describing the record, which I think is a great way of putting it. Although there’s a lot of duality within the album, from dancefloor tracks to some that are quite deep and heavy, there’s a defining quality, that invisible string that ties great records together, and I wanted to talk about that idea of cohesion as opposed to similarity.
Aurora: There’s so much of everything in the world, and we have this very human need to put anything that we observe or experience into a box to make sense of it. When you do that, you can forget about the absolute magic and joy in things just being allowed to be as they are. It’s like we’re so dependent on change in the world, but we’re also so scared to change ourselves, or that our friends are changing, or an artist is changing, or even song to song on an album. We love this album being one entity, but still allowing it to be whatever it wanted to be, and still being secure enough to say that, no, but this is TOMORA, this album is Come Closer. It’s one thing, but it can also be allowed to be everything, if that makes sense.
I wanted to come back to something you said, Tom, when you mentioned that just because the process is fun doesn’t mean the music is fun, which I think is quite evident on tracks like “COME CLOSER” and “THE THING”, which are quite heavy and can be quite difficult to listen to, in a nice way. But what is it like to actually record music like that? Do you have to go to a particular emotional or psychological place to make those tracks, and can that be quite heavy?
Tom: When recording “COME CLOSER”, I was in floods of tears. It was so intense. We were just improvising in the studio together, we were both playing on a synthesiser, and Aurora started to sing, and the sheer intensity of emotion in the room. I look back on it now and I see it as a fun thing to have done, but that sensation was so strong, and I think that was the point for both of us where we realised that we had some magic.
Aurora: It was a big moment, and it is fun, but it’s fun in a way that’s freeing and interesting and eye-opening, but also just a focus on having a good experience, rather than having success or making it perfect. I think when we wrote “Side by Side” in Norway, it was quite hard to record those vocals, and there was something with the synthesiser for me that sounded kind of so sad, but also, nauseous. It was almost too overwhelming. It was making me feel kind of sick the whole day as we were writing, but it didn’t mean I thought the song was bad. I just knew that there’s something in this music that makes me feel not necessarily a pleasurable feeling, but that’s also okay. I guess it’s only sad to experience the sad feelings if you’re scared of them. But if you love them too and invite them in as a friend, then even that becomes pleasurable, you know?
On the flip side, tracks like “RING THE ALARM” and “I DRINK THE LIGHT” have a very different energy and aesthetic. I’m interested in that contrast within the record. How do you move between those different emotional and sonic spaces, from a track that can bring you to tears to something that is made to rock a dancefloor, while still making everything feel like it belongs to the same world?
Tom: Both those things are in us. We both get the same excitement from having this really intense, as Aurora said, like, almost sickening feeling. That’s a great feeling, and it’s also a great feeling just to have the speakers turned up loud and feel the bass vibrating in your body. It’s just the intensity of sensation. I think we both love to hunt for a sensation, to make you feel something. TOMORA is definitely trying to make you feel something.
Aurora: We wouldn’t stay on one song for too long. We would pour whatever we felt very intuitively in the moment into it, and then we would be like, “Okay, that’s it for today. Let’s move on to the next song.” And then it was all just pouring and pouring in such an effortless but very distinct way, instead of having to, like, think and work and be like, “Oh, how do we solve this?” It was this beautiful space between, and I guess after pouring out something soft, maybe we were like, “Okay, let’s open a song now and we can just fuck it up”, because that feels nice after you’ve been crying.
Improvisation seems to be integral to TOMORA, both in the studio and on stage. I often think my favourite shows are the ones where it feels like the wheels could fall off at any moment. There’s a shared sense that the artist is living on the edge, and the audience can feel that. From watching the shows from afar and hearing you talk about them, I get that feeling from TOMORA. Am I on the right track?
Tom: That is a fun tightrope to walk. We try and bring the same feeling we have in the studio of surprising each other and taking different sort of tangents into the live show, and to build this intensity of feeling. I think we obviously both bring a lot of experience from playing lots of concerts in our world’s and bringing this into TOMORA and create this thing that can be really tight but also has a real space to be really free and just respond to each other. We’ve had some amazing times when we were on stage.
Aurora: The way we set up the live show, the mothership, as I call it, with the help of our beautiful Coxie. It’s just so fun! The freedom it gives us and how it allows us to truly read the audience as well, and even give them what they need or just hold on and not give it to them, and then when it finally happens, it’s explosive. It’s beautiful. It’s the whole point of live shows.
I’ve read you talking about both of you somewhat favouring invisibility on stage when performing as TOMORA. I’d like to understand that a little more. What appeals to you about removing yourselves from the traditional performer/audience dynamic?
Tom: We’re not very invisible [laughs].
Aurora: We fucked that up [laughs]. In the beginning, we thought we should never show who we really are, and I forgot that eventually people would recognise my voice. But it’s nice when things don’t go to plan, because you can improvise some more, and now it’s become very human. It’s not too serious; it feels very close to the audience.
Tom: Also, the big thing when talking about the invisible thing is also, like, the sharing of everything, and a big part of it is Amalia playing with us and Aurora and her sharing this thing together. I love it when we play that and you share the lines of the song. It’s nice. That’s a different thing. That’s new.
Aurora: I’m also so used to being in the front alone when performing, so it’s very fun to share it with someone. We’re also dressed the same and we do the same things, which I find really fun because it’s like this weird twin thing going on, which I do enjoy.
How has that experience been for you, Tom? I remember the first time I saw Chemical Brothers when I was 16, and I was blown away, but I remember turning to my friend and being quite confused as to why you didn’t talk to the crowd. I didn’t really understand the concept at the time.
Tom: That’s one of the Chemical Brothers’ foundational principles. You don’t need to know my thoughts on things. It’s easier to talk to the crowd, to say, “Put your hands up,” to say, “At this moment, do this; at this moment, do that.” This has to be a thing that comes from within you, the music. It’s almost like a cumulative effect of the music to make you do these things. It’s your choice. If you don’t want to do this, it’s fine. But we’re going to try and make you have this transformational thing through the music. You won’t be told what to do at our Chemical Brothers show. But it is very fun to play with Aurora, and it’s a very different approach, you know, something totally new, and I absolutely love it.
Aurora: Because my shows are, like, half talking, half performing [laughs]. Sometimes I speak for half an hour on world problems, the last time I peed, whatever’s on my mind. I just talk way too much. My poor band, they have chairs now so they can sit until I’m finished [laughs]. So it’s nice with TOMORA also to have kind of fewer things to say, but also something to say. It’s this beautiful middle ground between Chemical Brothers, almost, and me. Because I think it’s very fun to mix the state of the world with whatever emotional state people are in in the crowd at the time.
And you’re playing in Dublin again soon at the National Stadium. I know you played in Dublin a couple of months back at the Button Factory. How was that?
Aurora: Oh, fantastic, I fucking love it. [Says in a Dublin accent.] It’s like home. Oh, it was a beautiful time. It really was. And I can’t wait to come back. What a beautiful crowd! They can party, it’s great.
Interviewer: Yeah, that’s one thing we can do [laughs].
And since the show is changing each time, there’s that bit of spontaneity, from making music on the road to spontaneously talking about when you last peed. How is the show changing from show to show and country to country, since there’s a structure but it’s not too rigid?
Tom: TOMORA is a work in progress. It’s always moving and changing. We still haven’t done that many shows as a band, and we’re still finding new things. We have an amazing crew who are very adaptable. Sometimes, we’re doing a soundcheck and decide to play a song that no one in the crew has heard before. We’re like, “Oh yeah, we made this and we want to play it,” and then the crew has to programme the lights and work everything out. But that’s what TOMORA is, and that’s what we both want from it. I think in our other projects, things take a lot of preparation and are planned very much in advance, whereas TOMORA gives us both the freedom to just turn up to soundcheck and think, “Yeah, we want to do this today.”
Aurora: Yeah, it’s very in the moment. It feels absolutely amazing. It’s also because, we have an amazing crew around us who are very agile.
TOMORA play the National Stadium in Dublin on Saturday October 24th with POD. You can purchase tickets here.
