Like most pop stars, Little Jinder is small and beautiful in real life. Sitting in a make-up chair, she is blonde as anything, with a doll-like face, and wearing an Anne-Sofie Back dress that I love. Her demeanour is rather calm for someone who won the best new pop award at the Swedish Grammis the night before. She tells me that, on the way to our shoot, an old couple yelled across the street, “CONGRATS ON YOUR GRAMMY, LITTLE JINDER!” She was mortified, but waved at them anyway.

Josefine Jinder grew up in Stockholm and experimented with sound and music from an early age. Her mother, Åsa Jinder, is an alum of the industry, being Sweden’s youngest national folk musician of all time and now an esteemed player in the history of Swedish music. There’s no doubt that the younger Jinder was exposed to sounds and the process of music at a very early age. She casually says, “I have a lot of music in my family.”

Jinder first got interested in electronica when she was in the seventh grade and started hanging out at different record shops, discovering the likes of Aphex Twin and other contemporaries signed to the British independent record label Warp. She downloaded a music programme and started learning about synthesisers and the technical bits behind everything; the plan was to become a sound engineer.

At 18 she travelled to Liverpool in the UK to study Sound Technology at the Paul McCartney-founded Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. As pretentious as it may sound, she says, “I was 18, so I was more into drinking and smoking weed and having a boyfriend. It was just a really fun year.” Still, it gave her the opportunity to work with music and meet other musicians. When she started producing, she had to get into songwriting to make actual songs for her to produce, and then it just stuck.

Though her Grammis award was in the “new” category, she doesn’t consider herself an emerging artist. She had her first big breakthrough in 2009 with the song Youth Blood, a breathy, synthy club hit that pushed her name and sound to the front of the music-industry lines. By the end of 2013 she was writing and performing music in her native tongue and, since then, has been a bilingual electro-pop star. “I’ve been working for a very long time,” she says, thoughtfully. “I released my first EP when I was 20. I’m 27 now. I’d been working for a while before it turned out this way, so I feel like I deserve this, but at the same time I’m really grateful.”

Her music is known for being bold and her onstage persona the same but with more eyeliner. When I ask her what the difference is between her private life and stage life, she tells me, “I’m emotional as a person and in my music, but in my private life I’m probably more extreme than I’m allowed to be on stage. In music I’m more controlled – I sometimes feel like it’s the only forum where I actually have control in my life. In my private life things are messier. I’m a more polished version when I’m performing.” She laughs.

Performing is an experience that Jinder has been very vocal about. She once told a Swedish magazine about the most horrifying performance she ever faced: her boyfriend dumped her, the sound didn’t work and her stylist didn’t show up, so she had to wear her pyjamas onstage. When I ask her about that, she laughs and says, “Yeah, and I got my period while onstage, too!” To contrast this I ask her about her best performance. “They are all so different. Some are so good in different ways. It’s hard to pick one that is the ultimate performance. I just did something for the Carlsberg Green Door Project and the sound was terrible. I couldn’t hear anything, but the audience was amazing – 2,000-3,000 people singing along to every word, and I was so relaxed and had such a good time on stage. Then I have gigs where everything sounds good – sound is perfect, mission accomplished – but the vibe is not there. Sometimes it’s just your mood that controls everything.”

Her favourite part of the music process is actually making music, being in the studio and producing: “My favourite thing is just to lay in bed with my headphones on and produce.” So, is being on stage more a necessary evil? She thinks about this. “Sometimes I don’t feel anything at all,” she says. “And then I feel really weird about not feeling anything. Or I get really nervous and feel like I have to cancel the show. Like, ‘This is so fucked up, I can’t handle this. I don’t want to do this’, and my band is telling me to calm down and drink water and I’ll be fine. Once I’m on, all the nerves disappear, and then after the show, I’m thinking, ‘That was so awesome!’”

Credits:

Words by Koko Ntuen.

Photography by Nina Andersson.

Styling by Fiffi Jenkins

Hair and Make-Up: Louise Linder at Mikas

Fashion credits:

All: Marc By Marc Jacobs.

Special thanks to: Warner Music

Kissey-djmix:rfm by Theforumist.Com on Mixcloud

SWEDISH ARTIST WHO IS MAKING A MARK IN NYC

The Forum met the artist Kissey for a chat about music, the industry and why NYC.

Kissey is a Swedish artist making a unique mark in America. To be more specific, in the metropolis of New York City. As an artist who refuses to toe the line, she decided to go all in and found the music label KISSKISS together with her friends and colleagues DJ Bella Boo and Danna Takako.

– We have been working together for a couple of years and we tried to promote the new EP to different labels. We had a strong belief in what we were doing. Eventually we decided to put it out on our own label KISSKISS. And we haven’t regretted it once, Kissey says.

Kissey moved to NYC in a way to challenge herself. She describes it being more competitive but also more challenging and demanding, in a good way. She always needs to stay alert and also work hard on her weaknesses so she can become better. But the music and its message were what she put her focus on.
– My vision is to create honest music. I know what feeling I want to achieve and what it should feel like. Everything I do has to be authentic and real for me. For me, it is the most essential.

Kissey – ‘Hold Me’. Release: ‘Initiation – EP’

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The new ‘Initiation’ EP was released in May 2014. And she describes the working process has been more organic.

– My goal is to make good music for my five closest friends and make them want to dance. If my music makes them happy I have reached my goal.
The brand new dark artsy video for the track ‘Fuse’ is very intimate and sensual. Vice and other magazines have picked up on it, have you had only good responses from the tune and video?

Kissey – ‘Fuse’. Release: ‘Initiation – EP’

Kissey – ‘Dance the pain away’. Release: ‘Initiation – EP’

– I like to be honest with people. With this song I am very spot on and honest with my sexuality and honest with who I am. If a male rapper sang the same lyric nobody would even notice it.

It is well known that the music industry is dominated of male producers and artists, men head up the top positions and decide what we tune into on the radio.

– It’s not intentional, but it just so happens that I’m only working with women right at the moment. I have never had a problem with men, however! I produce some new and fresh female artists’ music and I also work together with my all-ladies label crew.

What is the key for success?
– I trust my knowledge in music and I trust myself in what I want to achieve musically. I don’t focus on any other things.

Initiation EP tracklist

1. Come Nightfall

2. Hold Me

3. Dance The Pain Away

4. Fuse

5. Love & Ecstasy

Credits:

The Forum will collaborate with the music curators and friends at R.fm who will be providing exclusive music mixes from interesting people.

In collaboration with R.fm, Bang On PR, Kissey, KISS KISS Records.

Interview by Rebekka Aldén.