The electronic music producer and DJ Jennifer Lee – alias Tokimonsta.
Nolwen Cifuentes for NPR
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Nolwen Cifuentes for NPR
Jennifer Lee has been lying in Koreatown since she was a child. His family led from the suburbs south of Los Angeles to eat in restaurants or shopping at the Koreatown Plaza, a 3 -story shopping center where the catering area offers dishes like Kimbap and Soondae.
K-Town is like his own city in the city of Los Angeles, and that’s where Lee suggested meeting Well -considered For our interview. While we are going to Western avenue, one of the main arteries in the neighborhood, Lee underlines a cinema – where the inhabitants can watch consumer films with Korean subtitles – and the turquoise facade arrows The WilternAn Art-Deco style theater.
“It’s beautiful, it’s so part of my childhood, as even my mother knows what Wiltern is. She doesn’t know what’s going on (however),” she said.
Lee, who performs like the electronic artist Tokimonsta, honored the scene of the place several times, but looking at the walls decorated with Wiltern, she says that playing there was not something that she never imagined like a child.
“When I was younger, I did not aspire to become a musician. I think that growing up in a family of immigrants, there was no time when a musician was stated for me as a possibility.”
This unfathomable dream has now become a career that has lasted over 15 years. His new album, Eternal reverieis its seventh full version, and it has released so many EPS. Eternal reverie Mark Lee’s first album in five years, and she says she has deliberately cut the time to do so. She stopped tours. And she tried to resume her early mind as a music manufacturer, at a time when she created beats without the pressure of album sales, photo sessions and visits.
“”One of my fears, once I started to make full -time music, is to become a resentment of music – what I like the most, “says Lee.” I felt this feeling of discomfort in a way in me, this “Oh guy, I have to do that or I have to do this” and not like “Oh, I was able to make beats today. What a gift.”
So, this album, says Lee, is a celebration of the dreamer that she was when she was younger. The dreamer who has never imagined playing Wiltern. The creative spirit which was so excited by what the future held and its endless possibilities.
“You know, life is difficult. Life is difficult for all of us. But that does not mean that the little dreamer in you must leave.”
Lee stands outside Love Hour in Koreatown.
Nolwen Cifuentes for NPR
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Nolwen Cifuentes for NPR
Lee has had his share of life challenges in the past decade. In 2015, it was diagnosed with a rare and potentially fatal brain disease called Moyamoya. She underwent two consecutive surgeries, a week apart, to try to save her life. Surgergia has succeeded, but they left it in intense pain – and for a while – without the ability to walk or perform basic motor functions. She couldn’t speak or understand the language. When people spoke, she said, it looked like the characters Peanuts. Beyond that, she could not listen to music – it looked like a metallic and crunchy noise – and she had also lost the ability to compose music.
“It was difficult. We use music as a healing tool,” she said. “And at that time, when I needed music the most, I did not have the ability to draw. I sat in the noise and silence. I had so much recovery that I had to do.”
She slowly found the ability to understand discourse. Then his vocabulary started to come back, but the music always felt out of reach. Slowly and gradually, she started to hear melodies again – “flowers appearing in a dead field” and the crunchy sounds she had heard softens in something more musical.
Finally, she tried to open her laptop again to write music. But she doesn’t say anything musical came out – everything seemed hard and weird.
“I had to understand that the creation of music is also a different part of my brain which had not yet been repaired,” she recalls. “Music is my life. This is my career. I think that he can hear it was great, but knowing that it was not in the cards for me was something that was very discouraging. So I closed my laptop, I put it away and I decided to address it later.”
A few weeks later, she resumed her laptop. And this time, she ended up with something beautiful: a song entitled “I Wish Ived” which appeared on her 2017 album, Red moon.
“My love letter to my friend”
Just on Western avenue from Wiltern, there is a small ringing parking lot by Korean pubs and a soft greenhouse cream store. Nestled on the back is a hamburger place called Love Hour, co -owner by Lee’s friend, Jimmy Han. “He’s a little older than me, so in Korean, we said he is a bit like” Oppa (older brother) “”, she says.
They met when Lee’s career was just beginning, and when she played Coachella in 2022, he sold a special “Tokimonsta meal“At the festival: a hamburger beyond with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, caramelized onion and” love sauce “, with a side of seasoned curly fries and Kimchi cream sauce.
She says that her namesake Burger had sold when she finished her set that day, but she had many other opportunities to eat the burgers here. “I spent my birthday on this patio,” explains Lee. “And I ate like three of them. I am constantly doing research on his burgers and I eat them.”
Lee’s sustainable friendship network presents itself a lot during our conversation on this terrace – from Han, to the friend of the college who presented it to the battery scene in Los Angeles.
But it’s another friend, Regina Biondo, who is at the center of the story of her new album, Eternal reverie.
Lee describes Biondo as more than a close friend – more like a sister, she says. Biondo has designed Lee’s website, managed some of its tours and influenced Tokimonsta’s music as well. Lee remembers when she played a festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and by exploring the city, Biondo underlined a guy selling records in the street. One of these discs has finally become the vocal sample on the Eternal reverie True “Corazón / Death by Disco PT 2.”
While Lee finished work on the album last year, Biondo learned that she had cancer. Then, a few months before the release of Lee’s album and the planned tour, Biondo cancer worsened and was admitted to the hospital. Lee canceled the release of the album and the tour, to be alongside Biondo during his last days in hospice, writing to his fans: “To which I face this moment feels more emotionally and difficult than everything I did before, even more than my trip through the brain surgery of Moyamoya.”
Biondo died in October, at 42, and Lee says that she is still crying for the death of her friend while she is launching this album – an album infused with Biondo’s influence. Lee points the track “for you”.
“I have the impression that” for you “is the quintessence of what Regina loved in my music,” says Lee. “This is the one where I said to myself:” It’s my love letter to my friend. “And it was really difficult to go through this release process because I have to talk a lot about it.”
At one point, Lee considered not to leave the album at all, because it was a reminder of a painful year in his life. But Lee says that she hopes that publishing it in the world will be a journey through sorrow, learning and self -awareness. And although talking about Biondo was more difficult than she imagined, it is also a way to honor it and share how special it was.
“It’s part of the story of this album and it is really afraid of talking about someone you lost,” said Lee. “And it is also important, because everyone suffers in different ways, but we must see examples of more people suffering and flourishing.”
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