Multi-instrumentalist Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff is finding strength in self scrutiny. On her second album, RATKING, the Danish-Faroese artist, who performs under the moniker Brimheim, finds catharsis in the contradictions of love and comfort in her own audaciously dark humour.
Released at the end of March, her latest effort is as raw as her 2022 debut offering, can’t hate myself into a different shape, but on RATKING, she vivaciously embraces remnants of shame, hyper-sensitivity and unrequited love, and sets them to a more pop-tinged, melodic backdrop.
Speaking to me on the same day that RATKING officially entered the world (mildly hungover from a panel event and performance the night before to celebrate its release), Brimheim is just as open to elaborating on her processes and reflecting on the highs and lows of creating music as she was when we initially connected two years ago.
Back then, she explained that the songs that formed her debut record were mined from a “deep depression hole” which she experienced towards the latter end of 2020. There are elements of this vulnerability and darkness on RATKING, but the starting point for creating her new album was completely different. Returning to the studio to work alongside esteemed producer, musician and friend Søren Buhl Lassen (Blaue Blume), Brimheim had no demos and no notes to spark the creative process; so the pair began improvising and experimenting with the sounds that eventually formed the tracklist for RATKING.
“I definitely think that I would not have been able to make this record with a new producer,” Brimheim comments about its inception. “It required trust to go to places that we’ve gone, both sonically, and with trying to expand the outer margins of what a Brimheim record can be.” She elaborates on how this was trust was initially built between Søren and herself: “Towards the end of creating the first record, Søren and I made this little interlude called ‘like a wedding’. It’s just this 40 second bit that we jammed in the studio. That worked so well and it was a really cool process. So, when we started making RATKING, we tried to do that for the whole album, and it was mostly a very intuitive process.”
As the pair worked more intensely on these new improvisations together, Brimheim noticed that thematic threads were beginning to appear. “I didn’t have any theme guiding me with what I wanted to do sonically, or lyrically. But after the first few weeks of working in that way, and gathering some songs that came very effortlessly to us, and how we could build on that – that’s when the process got a little more intentional and guided.”
This confidence in each other’s abilities takes many forms on RATKING. Whether it’s the fully fleshed band sound and distinctive instrumentation on tracks like ‘Dancing In The Rubble’ and ‘Keep Bleeding Diamonds’, the infectious pop melodies on singles ‘Literally Everything’, ‘Brand New Woman’ and ‘Normies’, or the sonically more expansive tracks like ‘No Liver, No Lungs’ and ‘Surgeon’, Brimheim and Søren have crafted an eclectic and exhilarating collection of lush alt-pop anthems.
When listening to RATKING, it feels as if Brimheim – as she states herself – is giving ‘Literally Everything’ to her listeners, coolly musing during the track that “It’s easier than I thought / To turn my secrets into your entertainment”. She agrees that her second offering is definitely “a more extroverted and confident record.”
Whilst the confessional lyrics on can’t hate myself into a different shape offered a raw, startling glimpse into the thoughts and struggles of an introverted and often vulnerable narrator, on RATKING, Brimheim gleefully leans into the “unreliable narrator” role. She fluctuates between intense romantic extrapolations and painful sentiments on heartbreak, isolation and neglect – often all within the same song. This is especially true of her current favourite track, ‘Fell Through The Ice’. “It has this quiet desperation,” she explains, “but it ends up spilling out like gall, and there is this humour in how ridiculously pathetic the narrator is in the song.”
We dive a little deeper into some of the album’s other tracks, particularly ‘No Liver, No Lungs’ and ‘Surgeon’, which I offer up as my favourites. “To me, they’re a little bit like the sleeper songs on the album,” she comments. “I think that they have a lot of depth and are really interesting. Those songs are the ones where we’re stripping away most of the ‘traditional rock band’ arrangement. They are mostly electronic.”
“With ‘No Liver, No Lungs’, I don’t remember much about making this song because it was so effortless. We chose to put ‘Surgeon’ after it on the tracklist, because we’d opened up the portal to that sonic world. So we could go a bit further into this world and make it a bit dark, even a little scary. When we created ‘Surgeon’, it was a long day in the studio. It is actually kind of an oppressive soundscape if you listen to it for 8 hours straight. But I think it was such a cool nuance to include. Again, to me, it is expanding the scope of the kind of music that I can make.”
Building on and expanding her artistry as Brimheim naturally extended into the accompanying visuals for RATKING. In the video for her first single ‘Literally Everything’, Brimheim is dressed luxuriously in baby pink, posturing and performing inside a dark barn amongst animals and their excrement – accurately serving the track’s title. She is toying with the duality of perception and expectation; what something looks like vs how it really feels – and how we often mask the truth from others and of course, from ourselves.
Brimheim manages to transform moments of intense discomfort into deliciously dark and humorous visual vignettes. Whether she’s enamoured with a strange, tentacle-headed monster in the accompanying video for candid earworm ‘Normies’, or force feeding herself prawn cocktail at the dining table inside an extravagant mansion in the visuals for ‘Brand New Woman’, she does so with a wry and knowing smile.
“Each of the video’s directors understood that there was a humour to this thing – it’s almost self-deprecating, but not, at the same time,” she elaborates. “It’s something that I love to play around with, and the videos underline that tone of voice in a good way. I was very happy about that.” This comes across especially strongly in the visuals for ‘Brand New Woman’, featuring fellow Danish singer/songwriter Emma Grankvist aka eee gee.
Brimheim’s brief to director Stine Emil was “housewife – but make it creepy”, so they rented a huge mansion north of Copenhagen for the shoot. “Stine really took that idea and ran with it in a super cool way,” she comments, “and I got to act a little bit at the end, which is something I’ve always wanted to try my hand at. That’s actually ended up with me being cast in a feature film that I’ll be shooting later this year too.”
Collaborating with like-minded artists, directors and producers, and the opportunities that arise from these experiences, is something that Brimheim is deeply excited and appreciative of. “It’s challenging and wonderful, and such a weird position to be in, launching your career towards your late twenties and early thirties,” she reflects. This extends to her feelings about her upcoming UK tour, which includes a headline show at The Lexington in London on 22nd May. “I’ve been dreaming about going on a tour like this since I was 12 years old,” she smiles. “I’m 34 now, and it took a long time to get here, but I am extremely excited.”
We end our conversation with a chat about an artist that she’s currently listening to. “I’m obsessed with Tony Njoku, who is just incredible,” she enthuses. “I know him privately and I’ve followed his journey throughout the past 7 years, when we met on a conservatory exchange week. He’s just released a new song, which is a neo-classical piece, but he also does really hard-hitting alternative electronic/alternative pop music. It’s just stellar. I cannot gush about him enough. He’s prolific. He releases so much music, and it’s always so different. He showed me some tracks that he’s working on and I’m like ‘okay, he is going to get very famous, very soon.’ He is just ridiculously good.”
Brimheim’s latest album RATKING is available here
Grab a ticket for her London headline show at The Lexington on 22nd May here
Follow Brimheim on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram & Facebook
Photo Credit: Photo by André Hansen
Kate Crudgington
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