Sharp, intelligent, and striking, Kenzie is quietly building her own space in the music industry. On her 2018 EP Dark July, Kenzie drew our hearts and souls into her musical essays on the paradoxes of modern love – wanting to be intoxicated by love whilst trying to hold onto your identity as an individual and protect your heart. Releasing music under her own label, harnessing a plethora of influences, and taking hands on approach to everything she is creatively involved with, Kenzie lets us under her skin ahead of the release of her next creative endeavour.

I would say that you’re a multi-faceted creative, with your main medium being music. Would you agree?
That's such an eloquent way to put it haha. Yeah, I think because music is so multidimensional, it becomes my excuse to create things that don't necessarily sit within the confines of songwriting and performing. It's so ingrained and tied into everything that I do anyway, anything I create ends up involving music in a visceral way.

Can you pin point where your creativity stems from? Where you always creative as a child, or do you come from a creative family, or was it something that developed as you grew up?
I grew up in a house that encouraged whatever my siblings and I were interested in, and I think I just always leaned towards art and music. I only ever wanted to learn to play piano enough so I could make my own songs, or I'd watch my dad paint and want to add things to what he was making. In a way, it probably also helped that I never really felt like I fit in, because I was happy to just live in my own world and explore that and create things. I don't know if music was even my first love, but it was definitely the most immediate and natural way I felt able to express myself - song writing, specifically.

A huge part of my creative identity was shaped by the music and art I was obsessed with as a teenager. I think that’s there’s this stage where, when you’re that age, you feel like no one understands you, and find this ineffable solace in art, especially if you feel like an outsider I guess. Was this similar for you?
Yeah definitely! And I think we've talked a lot about the idea of growing up on the internet and feeling like that's a shared culture. I think that this is true for a lot of our generation in some respect, but at the time wasn't something we could really see happening. You'd find websites, they'd give you all these new pieces of literature and music and art to check out, and you'd be able to live inside of whatever new world you wanted, especially when the one you physically lived in makes you feel othered.

So, what were you obsessed with?
Pretty much everything. I became obsessive with anything that felt new and like something I didn't know about. I'd become a total fake scholar of, like, Czech arthouse films from the 60s for a week, before finding something else to cull from this crazy long list I was accumulating in notebooks and on my desktop. I'm still that way honestly; I have serious ADHD when it comes to ingesting information.

Last year, you released your EP. I fucking love all the songs, and the reason I asked you about being a teenager is because from what I’ve heard of your music, it really evokes these feelings of romantic obsession and nihilism that I strongly associate with that era of my life. Walking this line between being madly in love with someone or something whilst trying to be cool and pretend you don’t care. Is this accurate? Or what was it for you?
Thank you! It's very cool that those are the feelings that have resonated with people I've talked to. I definitely deal in extremes when it comes to my feelings, but I'm also hyper-analytical in processing them. I also tend to let all my demons hang out when I'm writing a song, so all of those extreme feelings come to the surface. I consider myself a cynical romantic I guess, which might be a paradox, but I've spent a lot of time throwing myself into something with someone and then waiting for one of us to fuck it up. It's a pattern that's existed since my first love, and I'm only now unlearning it.

on “You The Best”, which you released in March this year, you tell this story of losing innocence after falling out of love, and realising afterwards how much someone fucked you over and gaslit you. Is this true or am I just making this about me, like everything hahah.
Yeah that's a long ass story that's not even worth getting into. But I think the take away from it again is we've all been there.

I’m a real romantic and I fall in and out of love all the time. Is this the same for you?
YES! I'm constantly falling in or out of love, but not always in a romantic way. The nature of love is so complex. I used to just assume a relationship was romantic and then realise later how much I oversimplified my feelings. Maybe I just saw a mirror in that person, or I was trying to save them, or in awe of them, or inspired by them, or whatever. Now it's become easier to recognise where my feelings lie and be able to distinguish between different types of love. Damn, that sounds almost like growth?

I know you started your label BBYTTH as a way to release your music whilst retaining creative control. Now it seems like the label has taken on a life of its own. Can you explain this in a bit more detail? DO you think DIY music release is the way to go at this point in time?
I think there are so many avenues to go down nowadays when it comes to putting out music. I can only speak from my own experience, but I've always wanted to be involved with the entire process as much as I can when it comes to my art and what's coming out. That being said, I know what a lot of my limitations are. I'm an independent artist, but it doesn't feel so DIY when I've built this incredible network of crazy talented people around me who I involve. Sometimes I don't know if it's that I'm actually multi-faceted or I'm just a control freak, but BBYTTH has become more of a world that these people and the music and all of these other creative ideas I have can live inside of.

I know that with your forthcoming music release, you are also making a zine and merch. Your creative vision is clearly very strong and moving forward do you want to continue to extend the perimeters of what being a “musician” means?
I don't have an issue calling myself an artist. However, because I make music from a place that, despite having a moderate amount of theory, is led predominantly by feeling, it’s always felt very strange calling myself a musician. Maybe that just shows how much the framework for what a musician is has changed. There are so many things I want to see come to fruition that feel like an extension of the music. I'm mostly concerned with pushing those boundaries for myself and finding new things to try and explore.

So, what can we expect to see next from you?
Sharing more twisted dreams I've been manifesting.