It’s quite the statement to say ‘come closer’ at a time like this; when everything feels like it’s being torn apart, like technology is putting a real distance between truth and reality, between feeling and authenticity, between one human and another. Well, to help make amends, Aurora and The Chemical Brothers‘ Tom Rowlands have fused themselves together.
“We always want connection,” Rowlands tells NME, in the first exclusive interview from new supergroup Tomora – who announce their debut album ‘Come Closer’ today (February 5). “In the studio, when we were writing, the connection we have in the music is a powerful thing. The album is about the search for some connection.”
The pair have worked together on a string of occasions before – starting with Aurora lending vocals to a few tracks on Chems’ 2019 album ‘No Geography‘ and again later on ‘For That Beautiful Feeling‘ before Rowlands returned the favour by “puking and vomiting” ravey touches to ‘My Body Is Not Mine’ from her ‘What Happened To The Heart?‘. A creative and spiritual bond was formed, one that meant far more to them than just making music. It’s an real and human feeling that drives their intimate but ambitious electro-pumped debut, creating what they call “a mix of escapism and confrontation”.
Yes, Tomora is a merging of their names, but by happy accident, it also translates to ‘a friendly companion on earth’ in Japanese, according to Aurora. “It’s so sweet that it means that too because it’s such a simple thing that we sometimes forget the importance of in this world,” she says. “Also, it’s such a tiny but big world, and to say, ‘Come closer, please’ is like a nice whisper of a secret that you need to come closer to hear.”
We meet the dance music legend and the Norwegian alt-pop pioneer at The Social in London, a place of particular significance given The Chemical Brothers cutting their teeth and helping to shape modern electronica and dance culture as we know it at the venue and clubnight predecessor The Heavenly Social. “It was the beginning of our story, really – me and Ed [Simons, bandmate] DJing together,” Rowlands recalls. “It was such a crucial part of our band’s identity, the people we met and the scene that we were involved in. It’s nice to be back here.”
So you’d assume that Rowlands and Aurora have since been clubbing together at least? Has she shown him the dark side of her native Bergen? “That’s the only side!” she replies. “We haven’t gone out dancing, but every time we make Tomora music, we dance a lot. It feels like a party.”
Perhaps the real nightclub is in the mind. “And that’s the only club that matters,” Aurora agrees. “It’s the best club in the world.”
Watch the interview in full or read it below, as Tomora tell NME about what brought them together, finding a little humanity, activism in hard times, plans for their explosive live show, and what the future holds for the pair.
NME: Hello Tomora. Aurora once told us of your relationship to Tom that you “feel like two little aliens walking around, and we have the same hunger for something exceptional…”
Tom Rowlands: “That’s a lovely way to put it. ‘Exceptional’ is what we want to deal in and what excites us both. Collaboration between us brings out something new.”
Aurora: “It does. My god, we’re having a lot of fun. It feels so much like we’re back to the roots of why it’s beautiful to make music: there’s no pressure or expectation.”
Rowlands: “We got together to make music without any idea that it would lead to anything or that we were even making an album. I just cherished this moment of freedom, creativity and making something great. We didn’t know if we were going to finish or release anything; it was just about being in the studio together.”
Aurora: “Shit tonnes of fun!”
Aurora, you also once told NME that you’ve loved Chemical Brothers ever since you were a sperm, but it was actually their 2011 soundtrack to Hanna that first really caught you, right?
Aurora: “I was sadly a sperm until the age of 14; it was very hard for me.”
Oh no. How was school?
Aurora: “It was very hard to hold a pen, could you imagine? I could barely do it. Then I discovered ‘Hanna’, and it’s my favourite soundtrack to any film, still. The sounds are so massive, but also so delicate and so brutal, but kind. It’s so dark but also playful and beautiful. It’s the perfect soundtrack to that movie, and I remember it making a huge impact on me. I think it was the first piece of music that I discovered on my own and found for myself. Then I went deeper into Tom Rowlands’ world and The Chemical Brothers and thought, ‘This is fantastic, it really tickles me in all the right places’.”
Tom, you asked Aurora to jump on a few tracks on Chems’ ‘No Geography’, with your collab ‘Eve Of Destruction’ becoming a latter-day peak of your live set. What was it about Aurora that first drew you in?
Rowlands: “I saw her on the coverage of Glastonbury [2016], and this presence came out of the screen towards me, and I just thought, ‘What is going on here?’ There was something about the power, the strength and the steeliness that Aurora has, but it was also beautiful, vulnerable, and all these things at once. There was something incredible happening there on that stage, and I thought, ‘Perhaps it would be quite a nice idea to try and make music together’. I wrote an email to her, and then it was just tumbleweed…”
Aurora: “I needed a week to just collect myself! He thought I wasn’t going to answer ever, but then a week went by, and I thought, ‘Now I feel like I can answer this with dignity’. I needed to be dignified and collect myself for our first exchange. I was over the moon. It arrived at a perfect time in my life, and it was the first need of a tiny holiday for myself. Now we’re also having a holiday from ourselves. We’ll return to our own paths, but it feels like a holiday.”
You first worked together back in 2017, when Aurora was feeling somewhat lost after the huge success of your debut album ‘All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend’ and wanted to know where to go next. Working with Tom was a catalyst for finding your way, right?
Aurora: “Yes. I toured so much, with like 300 shows in a year in 2016. It was my first tour, and I thought, ‘Is this how it always is?’ I returned home like a shell of myself and thought, ‘This doesn’t seem right’. I wondered if I was going to [continue to] be an artist or not. It seemed very far from the core of what I love about music, and that’s exactly when I got Tom’s email. It was music, but it was something new and had very little burden on my shoulders.
“Then just being there in the countryside with this beautiful family, the whole adventure of meeting Tom, being in the studio, and everything being so intuitive just felt like a really good thing for my soul. I returned home really full.”
Tom, did you sense your work was having that impact at the time, that there was something more going on?
Rowlands: “I didn’t realise the significance of it. It’s a real leap of faith to just get on a plane and do this, and it’s so easy to say no. It can be hard. You’re going into a creative thing as two people who don’t know each other, but immediately we got together, and Aurora’s response to sounds just blew my mind apart. It was something I really cherished in my creative life. To do more with it was a dream.”
Then, in Aurora’s words, Tom “puked and vomited his sound all over” ‘My Body Is Not Mine’. Is that when you realised you wanted this collab to be something more?
Rowlands: “To me, it was just a continuation of the thing. I got this text message going, ‘I’ve got this song, but I need you to destroy it in some way’. You’ve got four hours.”
Aurora: “The ‘ceasefire now’ part is so much fun. Tom made this whole ending that wasn’t even there, and it opened up something that people back home seem to enjoy: the call-out for ceasefire [in Gaza]. I was very happy. He did a very good job in very little time. I wish I had a better word than ‘vomit’, but he poured something that isn’t musical over it.”
Rowlands: “That’s my talent: to destroy nice music everywhere we go.”
Aurora: “…and make it growl a bit.”
Being in The Chemical Brothers must be a pretty all-encompassing thing. What does it mean to have this vehicle as a creative outlet?
Rowlands: “It’s nice. Every day has been spent working towards The Chemical Brothers. I love working with Ed and the music we’ve made together. It’s been my life, and it still is my life, but with the last tour and making 10 albums, there was a bit of a feeling of, ‘I need to just have some other thing happen and something else to think about’. I needed to wake up with a new challenge. The experience of working with Aurora on ‘No Geography’ was such a beautiful thing to me, and I thought, ‘I want to have that feeling again’.”
Aurora: “In reality, we both would have maybe had a year off this year and not made music. We just chose to make music instead because it felt nice for the heart and so good to create. We’re out there again in the arms of music still – but there’s something about it that makes it feel like resting still.”
What both of you have always done so well with your music – in two very different realms – is world-building. How would you describe the world you’ve built here on ‘Come Closer’?
Aurora: “Tom and I know very much who we are, and we also know what we like for Chemical Brothers and Aurora. In our Venn diagram that overlaps, there’s a tiny part in there that’s Tomora and very specific and clear to us. Without speaking about it, we know exactly what we want Tomora to be and what it has to be, and it happens very organically. Every song is like a very distinct character.”
Aurora, your artistry and your activism have always gone hand in hand with your sense of justice and community. Is that something that you guys talk about a lot? Has that bled into this record?
Aurora: “I think it has. Every day when we go into the studio, we always talk. The state of the world is always with us with our morning coffee. We discuss, and that’s very important, with the people around you, when the world is so activated with action and demands of human rights. However big or small the ask is, all these important things are still valid. We keep this in our minds and our hearts whenever we are together. We have to.”
Rowlands: “The humanity of the music and emotional communication through sound and the voice is the essence of it for us.”
Aurora: “It’s in there, but different to the way we both normally do it. The voice of Tomora has its own activism: it’s a mix of escapism and confrontation, of happiness and sadness. It’s nice to explore the different voices that the representation of your time can have in art and music.”
Coming together for anything right now feels like a political act in itself…
Rowlands: “Anything that gives people an excuse to leave their house, be with other people and experience something collectively together, and feel the same thing at the same time is a beautiful thing.”
And you’ve got some live dates coming up, including festival gigs and Coachella…
Rowlands: “The music we’ve written is going to be wild.”
Aurora: “To all of my fans in the autistic community, please bring ear protection. It’s going to be OK, but protect your ears. We don’t want any structure to be left in a building after we’ve been there.”
Rowlands: “[Chemical Brothers] used to play live, and bits of the ceiling would fall down. That’s always a good sign.”
You’ve made the live visuals from Adam Smith, a long-time Chems collaborator who also worked on Aurora’s last tour. What can we expect from this live show?
Aurora: “We’re going to cook up something nice… on a very low budget!”
Rowlands: “We were working one day in the studio and putting ideas together for a set. It was so crazy. Afterward we were like, ‘This is the most intense it’s ever going go be’.”
Aurora: “This is why I really have to warn my community! We’re going to move around a lot, and like both our shows, it’s going to be very dynamic.”
Aurora, the last time we spoke, you were about to play Wembley, and we talked about the work you were doing to make arenas feel intimate so you could really connect with the audience. Are you getting into an entirely different kind of mode and mindset for this?
Aurora: “I feel like I can experience Tomora in the same way as anyone out there can; both from the inside and out. There’s something about this album that is easier to listen to without judgment. It’s very enjoyable. It’s a freeing thing, and it’s been very easy to live with it. It’s the same with the live performance: I’m going to feel like I’m also in the audience, and not just entertain, but play. I think I’m going to learn some things.”
Tom, are you pulling some moves you’ve never pulled before?
Rowlands: “So many new moves! There are a lot of plans. She was always trying to get me into a breakdance moment on ‘Eve Of Destruction’.”
Will you be playing any Chems or Aurora tracks, or just pure Tomora?
Rowlands: “We’re still working it out.”
Aurora: “It’ll be the 50 Cent x Thomas The Tank Engine remix for 10 hours straight. We’re trying to see if that will make the world a better place. You’re going to have to see. I really want Tom to have a really heavy breakdance moment where people say, ‘For some reason, he’s surprisingly good’.”
Have both been tinkering away at your solo material and Chemical Brothers’ new stuff, or is this year just about Tomora?
Rowlands: “It’s all about this, really. We got together last week, and we’re making new music already. We can’t stop!”
Aurora: “It’s so nice just to get this part of you out. It’s so refreshing, fun, and I can’t wait. I’m also making more music for me now, but I like to do both. You get to be hot and cold, awake and asleep, hard and soft. The multitudes make me feel very complete as a human being.”
So this is the start of a new thread?
Rowlands: “I don’t think we’ll stop making music when we’re together.”
Aurora: “It’s so much fun, and you should never stop fun things. The only thing you should stop is pedestrians who don’t look for cars before they cross the road.”
Tomora release ‘Come Closer’ on April 17 via Fontana. Pre-order it here. They play a summer of festivals across Europe and North America, kicking off with Coachella.