Kim Richard Adler Mejdahl is known to make films, visual art, and music in unusual combinations. Mejdahl rose to fame as he starred in the popular Danish Broadcasting Corporation series on artists (Kunstnerkolonien). On the show he famously cited the theme park BonBon-Land as a major aesthetic influence on his work.
As Kim Kim, Mejdahl self-produced the album Amulet in 2016. This oddball electronica release was made with no prior knowledge of musical composition. In 2017 came the award-winning music video No Ozone consisting of handmade drawings.
In the Danish village Skælskør Mejdahl’s upbringing was disturbed by abuse and homicide. Mejdahl used the darkness of his past to create the films ODE (2015) and DAYS OF AL (2019), each with its own soundtrack by Kim Kim. ODE was acquired by the National Gallery of Denmark in 2020.
photo Petra Kleis
Mejdahl’s follow-up album Liljegrotten (translates to 'lily grotto'), had its live premiere at Roskilde Festival, and was nominated by Danish GAFFA Awards as the best electronic release of 2023. This album — a spiritual and challenging soundscape made to sound like a trip through a cave — was made of recordings created by 1000 anonymous people, thus making Liljegrotten Denmark’s largest joint sound piece.
In 2023 Mejdahl made a surprise collaboration with BonBon-Land for his art exhibition En! Gang! Til! (One More Time), and it was followed by Kim von BonBon, an EP made of all the soundscapes from the show.
Throughout the years Mejdahl has collaborated with a wide range of artists. An incomplete list counts Rikke Østergaard (RIN) and Maxe Johansen (SHON) with whom he took part in establishing underground queer label CECH RECORDS. In 2020 came the blazing cult-mixtape Long Hair Don't Care co-released with Femmexy. Acoustic and visual artist George Koutsouris created a new instrument, Psalm Machine, for Mejdahl's album Liljegrotten. Musician Henriette Sennenvaldt joined Mejdahl on stage for Friskabte (2023-2024), his debut theatrical show at Sort/Hvid Theater for an audio-visual interpretation of Danish author Glenn Bech's novel Farskibet. Mejdahl has also joined forces with peachlyfe, the music collective SOLEN ER SEXET (Lise Westzynthius, Bjørn Rasmussen), and visual artist Michael Kvium.
The sound of Kim Kim is the sound of extremes. Challenging sonic debris clashes with cartoony toy commerical-like jingles. Imagine a hunched cave-dweller who breaks way through the rocky walls to discover the beaming sun. It's music from the old world clashing with the new world. And as a ship's mast in the middle of that hurricane drama stands the queer voice of the artist.
The sound of extremes — night and day, sun and moon, sound and image, horror and comedy. In the sonic world of Kim Kim the extremes are embraced and celebrated, not as opposites, but interlinked as parts of the very same thing. Kim is Kim.
