Kate Boy

What drew you to Sweden?
I was living in London when I decided to make my first trip to Sweden, so for an Australian it seemed like such a short flight I just had to do it. I was so intrigued by the music scene there, even though I didn't know anyone in Stockholm, I just wanted to go and check it out for myself. Luckily I met the guys on my 5th day in town, and I guess that was the answer to my curiosity with the country… so I kept coming back until I eventually moved there!

How does your group dynamic work?
Who ever creates the first seed of a piece of music always puts their touch on it. The first idea often sounds quite different from the finished result. It's not until we all add our vision and touch to it that it forms a KATE BOY song or video. It's a great thing that we're all so inspired by different things, otherwise it could very easily be one sided and flat. That's the best thing about working in a team with people you trust. Everyone will put their personal spin on it and this new, unique piece is created.

Your music has been compared to that of The Knife and Peter Gabriel, who do you cite as your musical influences?
David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Kate Bush, David Byrne... The list goes on. But there's so much more than just music, movies and novels or art is super inspiring. Sometimes certain locations just have an amazing impact on your creativity, almost without you actually noticing it.

The Northern Lights EP by Kate Boy is available to buy now on Amazon.

Text by Rhiannon Wastell

Stockholm based Kate Boy are currently busy taking the electro-pop world by storm. Made up of three native Swedes and Australian front woman Kate Akhurst, the band formed only a year ago, having bonded over just one drink when Akhurst was visiting Sweden. Citing Peter Gabriel and David Bowie as influences, their music is a combination of synth fuelled choruses and catchy lyrics, illustrated with monochromatic homemade videos. AnOther caught up with the band during their European tour, to discuss their DIY approach, culture clashes and the growing popularity of the Swedish music scene.

You make your own videos, what and who are your videos inspired by?
Limitations. Not having money, expensive equipment or a crew of 20 people is the best inspiration. It forces you to go back and really come up with an idea before you get lost in the technicalities. Conceptually, the inspiration often comes from very simple ideas. Like how our Northern Lights video features faces and sculptures blended together to form a new kind of being, almost like a new person or entity. We really wanted to show how Kate Boy was about the mix of us four individuals creating something bigger than we ever could have made alone. We wanted to create this "5th member" of the band.

Is it important to you to have that 'hands on' approach to your work?
It´s more important for us to achieve a specific result, a mood, maybe a general idea. When it comes to our music and visuals, since we're clear on what we want – usually it´s easier to do it ourselves then to tell someone else how to do it. However we do involve extremely talented friends in our video projects to be able to achieve the vision we had.

"We don't like to put male/female labels on everything. We try to be a healthy democracy, where everybody gets a vote and the end result is something that everybody approves of."

What was is it about the swedish music scene that makes it so popular?
This is a very hard thing to answer, we get this question a lot but it feels like the person that is most likely to have an answer to this would be somebody who has been in the music industry for 30+ years to have the full picture. A few things that can be mentioned however is that Swedish people grow up playing instruments in school, government has chipped in and made it very accessible for kids to learn instruments from good music teachers. This combined with Sweden being a very small country, if you work with music it doesn't take long to get to know a lot of people in the music scene. Another thing that might affect us is our television, when American shows and movies started airing around the world, many non english speaking countries started dubbing dialog with their own language. We've never had that in Sweden, which definitely gives us an advantage when it comes to writing songs in English. But maybe the strongest reason is because of our long winters, you have to create yourself some sort of hobby otherwise you go insane!

Your style is androgynous and monochromatic, what do you take influence from?
We knew early that we wanted to be a mix of all four of us, in every aspect of having a band. We don't like to put male/female labels on everything. We try to be a healthy democracy, where everybody gets a vote and the end result is something that everybody approves of. That's probably where the androgynous vibe came from. Same with the the monochromatic look. If you mix all the colours what do you end up with? Black.

Kate, how is it being an Australian amongst three Swedes? Do you find there are any culture clashes?
Every time we enter Sweden from another country, while the guys and the rest of Europe is welcome in the fast lane, I am the one taking the slow "other countries" lane, which always ends in a sympathetic look from the guys to me through the glass. They are not, however, so sympathetic when I decide to spread some Vegemite on my toast. But in so many ways, Australians and Swedes are quite similar. The biggest difference I've noticed is when to be serious and when not to be serious. Aussie's have a tendency to brush things off, and when things get serious we like to make a joke about, even if it's just to lighten the mood a bit. But anytime I do that in Sweden, it's normally faced with something like "why aren't you taking this seriously?!!".