Brimheim

It’s a messy business, becoming. Shady corners of our minds are filled with the debris of it, our cognitive junk drawers crammed with stray desires. For some it’s enough to just store these wants away, if by storing we mean throwing down a memory hole and hoping for the best. But for others, like Brimheim, it’s a question of what new shapes can be fashioned from the longing, and what else might reveal itself if held up to the light.

Since emerging in 2020, Malmö-based Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff has made an artform out of self-examination and olive-branching with her shadow side, having spent years fighting to somehow correct it. Vulnerability makes for an easy headline, of course, but those have all been written before and, in any case, is a surface level reading of her ambition. The arc of self-acceptance is fine, it’s something we can all relate to, but as the driving force of creation? No thanks. "Relatability is overrated. It's the least interesting thing art can give you," she says. “I want magic. I need the extraordinary.”

Born in Copenhagen to a Danish father and Faroese mother, from whom she borrowed the name Brimheim (a word that translates roughly to “home of the breaking waves”), growing up partly in the Faroe Islands set a baseline level of wonder that has stuck with her for life. It is the country of the Huldufólk, after all, the hidden people of the landscape who, as Brimheim says, “you do not want to fuck with.” They’re not above stealing your children if you do, so staying on their good side is advised. And, as it turns out, holding space for what you cannot see is  uite a high vibrational place to work from creatively.

Raised among authors and artists who went against the conservative grain of Faroese society, Brimheim’s early years were shaped by a feeling of closeness to ancient stories and myths. A songwriter since the age of nine, and more determinedly since her time at both the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus and the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, Brimheim describes her method as a process of digging around until she hits a main artery or a seam of precious ore, a place where something juicy can happen.

“I can’t stand blind certainty,” she says. “I always want there to be some sort of friction to my music, some weird colour that I throw on the canvas, and I will protect that no matter what. Even when I’m dealing with darkness, I never want to be one-dimensional with it.”

Enter RATKING (2024), Brimheim’s triumphant villain era that saw her leaning further into abstraction, doubling down on her own contradictions and music as a sandbox for theatre of the absurd. The guitar-driven catharsis of her 2022 debut can’t hate myself into a different shape remained, but this time it came with pop and electronic reinforcements – polished, made stranger, and put under glass, like some grotesque exhibit. Championed by The Line of Best Fit, GAFFA, KEXP, and others, RATKING went on to double wins at the Faroese Music Awards and Danish independent music awards Den Uafhængige, and a nomination for Danish Album of the Year at the 2025 Danish Music Awards.

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