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MENTAL OVERDRIVE: A lot of culture is based

in the kind of survival needs of living here.

When you grew up, that's the main cultural aspect

you're presented with. It's like, "This is where we're from,

and this is what we'll do."

We were trying to escape the dull reality of living in Norway.

KAHUUN: The mountains, the ocean, you're so close to everything here.

PRINS: Norway's kind of the last stop until you hit water.

MENTAL OVERDRIVE: We were trying hard to create our own little space.

DOC: We were very much on our own.

ANNIE: We like rhythm. We like disco.

It's... I guess it's the dream, you know, the perfect party.

If you look at Oslo or Norway now,

it's much more internationalized.

STRANGEFRUIT: That wasn't the case at all 25 years ago.

It was much grayer.

(TRAIN HORN BLOWS)

MICHAEL: Norway is, in many parameters,

a really weird country.

The least densely populated country in all of Europe,

so this is a people that are used to living

hundreds of kilometers from neighbors,

from being isolated, from living amid

this incredible scenery and surviving.

They were survivors clinging to this very inhospitable landscape,

and I think somewhere deep in Norwegians is this

almost primeval connection to their landscape.

Of course, there's clichés about living in Norway

how it was many years ago,

more of a country life in Norway

and the snow and the cold winters.

Deep in the Norwegian soul is a low self-esteem.

We're... we're old... I mean, we're potato land.

But there's this kind of dysfunctional family relationship

in Scandinavia. With the Swedes, it's like the goody-goody head boy.

The Dane is like the rebellious younger brother,

and the Norwegian is the kind of...

This isn't me. This is what other Scandinavians say.

Norwegians, like the retarded country cousin.

Of course, the biggest thing ever to happen to Norway

is the discovery of this huge quantity of oil and gas actually.

Ever since then, they have just opened the taps

to a nonstop supply of gold and wealth

and riches beyond anyone's imagining.

It went from a society where everybody was fishers or farmers

or something or to a more modern society.

I grew up, or we grew up, in the middle of that.

STRANGEFRUIT: Norway remained culturally communistic in a way.

Skateboarding was illegal in Norway until the end of the '80s.

STRANGEFRUIT: You look to Norwegian music from the '80s, or '70s, '60s,

the outside influence wasn't really there.

INTERVIEWER: What were clubs playing before dance music,

what kind of stuff did they play?

Mostly shit music.

Because in the '80s, not that much was happening,

even if you had a-ha, like a big pop success.

A-ha's breakthrough with "Take On Me"

was very important for Norwegian artists

to kind of show that it is possible for a Norwegian to make it in the US

or make it in England and the rest of the world.

We have to go into the '90s before something exciting happens,

and it comes from Tromsø.

There were a lot of artists coming from Tromsø,

and it kind of started the dance music

that is more... famous today.

DOC: Growing up in Tromsø was with a great sense of freedom.

We have a lot of space to explore, and we did.

BJØRN: It was kind of a protected youth or childhood.

So It was kind of boring, in a sense,

because you didn't get much impulses from within.

MENTAL OVERDRIVE: Before Internet, almost before we had human language.

We could just sit up here and monitor the world in a way.

We could sit here and watch

what the humans were up to in the other parts of the world.

The crowd in Tromsø I grew up with, we wanted to explore different stuff,

so we were like very curious about alternative music in any form.

All the guys I knew doing music or into music,

we were trying to escape the dull reality of living in Norway,

which we saw as not happening at all.

MENTAL OVERDRIVE: It was a bedroom movement. Freaks into synthesizers

and electronic music. We imported a lot of youth culture.

We collected everything into a big heap

that we shared among us.

The British music papers, they were very much in demand here.

Trying to follow what was going on beneath the surface in other places.

On the radio, we had one program a week,

which played music that could be good.

RUNE: So I built a AM radio amplifier of signals...

...and had a 20-meter cable out my window

to the neighbor's tree... (BEEPING RAPIDLY)

...just to get in whatever you could get in.

You had no other radio channels,

no commercial ones, nothing.

And suddenly, they handed out licenses

for each, you know, area or whatever.

Local radios were big here in Norway. It was in the '80s.

Beatservice was in the beginning a bit mainstream,

but gradually more and more alternative.

He was like playing all sorts of stuff, electronic body music,

Prince, The Cure, and all different types of sounds.

RUNE: Norway at the time there was no rhythms.

It's not like if you were in a block in the Bronx

and you can hear rhythm music all around you.

BJØRN: Eventually me and a couple of friends

started doing our own radio show

in another local station called Brygga Radio.

They let us play, well, let us do anything.

You can just play Detroit techno drive-time hours in the afternoon.

Anything got on air. We would've been sued to death

for most of the things that were done.

There was actually live sex and stuff like that being transmitted.

Total anarchy.

That got me into music that I wouldn't have found any other way,

so it meant a lot.

For us, the radio situation, to have a place with sound equipment,

recording equipment,

learning how to use a mixer and turntables,

that was crucial for us.

BJØRN: Okay, maybe we can start making our own tracks.

So all the music I listened to, they started using drum machines.

I remember I had this record from a Canadian duo.

There was this machine. I was, "What the fuck is that?"

I didn't know what it did. It looked awesome.

And it was a TR-808 drum machine. I was like, "I want one of those."

So I worked for the whole summer, spent all my money on a TR-808.

We had a great time experimenting with trying to make our own sound

but... failed. (LAUGHS)

RUNE: The first thing I heard about synthesizers,

which I thought was the coolest but didn't know anyone who had it,

was Biosphere's brother, who was in my parallel class.

I remember walking past the house and thought, "Oh,

he has synthesizers."

Norwegian dance music I think I first became aware of

probably through this guy Biosphere.

CARL: It was through him I got an inkling about Tromsø

and these Norwegian places

that seemed quite alien to me, I guess, at the time.

Nobody is gonna, you know, eclipse what Biosphere has done, you know?

I ended up in England in 1987 in Hackney in a squat. (LAUGHS)

I guess I was pretty lucky because everything that happened

in that period in London was very interesting.

My first exposure to Chicago acid...

...and Detroit techno...

...was through a tape that was given to me

from a guy who was also squatting.

It was kind of a revelation to me.

It was like, "Okay, there's a space for this kind of music in the world,

and it's the clubs."

I read this story when I was a kid in this Norwegian music magazine,

and there was an interview with Biosphere and Mental Overdrive

saying the only thing you needed to connect with the world

was a fax machine.

That sounds strange now, but that was what they were doing.

They were sitting in the north of Norway,

and they had international careers.

HANS: We have a strong connection to nature.

You can kind of connect snow, cold, ice

with sounds that are kind of the same.

DIGBY: Long darkness combined with beautiful nature,

it's going to have some sort of effect on your psyche.

MENTAL OVERDRIVE: It's great for actually taking the time

and get in depth with what you do,

and in the dark season, what should you do?

You sit inside and do something. You make music or listen to music.

It's a great place to contemplate and to be productive.

JOAKIM: I think they were inspired by the whole world.

And I think that they took influences from London,

and they brought it home.

I remember Bjørn and Rune was there as well.

Bjørn and Rune came over to London.

And we went record shopping in SoHo, and they were like all over the show.

'89 was the first year coming to London,

and then we made an annual trip, or at least I did,

for the next 10, 12, 13 years.

MENTAL OVERDRIVE: Bjørn, he was...

he was the most enthusiastic person I think I had ever met in my life.

He was really, you know, so, so genuine

about his interest in music

that it was really fascinating actually.

"Wow," I thought, "this guy, he means it."

I remember 1990 very well.

I think I brought back over 100 titles.

(LAUGHS) And he did. He meant it. He still means it.

Buy a hundred records,

obviously, you'll take some time to get through them,

and you won't catch up with everything at once.

You will find your favorites, and keep something in the back.

And they will come forth

as they kind of mature in your collection.

MENTAL OVERDRIVE: I didn't know anybody outside Tromsø

who were into this kind of music in Norway, no.

The first club playing house music here

was when me and Bjørn decided that we were going to put on a rave.

-Ah, there it is. -Oh, that's it.

-Yeah. -That's the one where we...

(BOTH LAUGH)

The most DIY event ever put on, I think, on the Earth...

-Yeah, yeah. Yeah. -...or in the Solar System, I guess.

MENTAL OVERDRIVE: We rented a sound system.

We made all the décor ourselves.

I built two strobes, so we had that.

And everything was set. It looked fantastic.

And then we had a rave, me and Bjørn. He was playing. I was dancing.

And then I went on the decks, and he danced.

So that was the kind of first club, I think, from Tromsø.

What was your... your hardcore?

-Open Skies. Yeah. -Open Skies, that was it.

You did hard...? I didn't know you did hardcore.

We had one 12 out on Reinforced, yeah.

-Happy hardcore. -Yeah, almost.

Tromsø... (LAUGHS) Tromsø had

all these young, very, very enthusiastic people,

and it was really refreshing.

I was playing at the festival here in the '90s.

Four young lads came up to me and said,

"Hi, we're going to play the support slot for you."

And that was... They were calling themselves Aedena Cycle.

That was Torbjørn and Svein from Röyksopp,

Gaute Barlindhaug and Kolbjørn Lyslo, Doc L Junior.

We kind of got that impression that,

if we want to put out music, we can just do it.

I mean, they did it, so why couldn't we do it?

And they were kind of younger than Bjørn's generation again,

so they were like the next step

of youngsters coming on to the music-making scene.

MENTAL OVERDRIVE: I don't need to get shaped by what surrounds me.

That was the freedom of growing up here with music.

If I grew up in a bigger city where there was a sound going on,

I would maybe start trying to fit into that sound.

That's maybe the freedom coming from the Tromsø scene.

You don't answer to anyone. You just make what you want to make.

BJØRN: So, that's kind of the start of it all.

All based in the boring, non-happening,

gray little northern town of Tromsø.

We were lucky to have these... alternative guys here in Tromsø.

Those people kept on releasing stuff and making music and moved,

later moved to other cities like Bergen and Oslo,

so there was kind of making things happen in other places too.

I decided to move to Bergen, "Yeah, I want to do this."

So I just took a chance.

That was '92 I moved here.

MIKAL: Bergen, it's a small city, I would almost say a big village,

on the Norwegian west coast.

About 250,000, 300,000 people living in the city and the surrounding area,

so it's definitely small.

KAHUUN: And as a city, it's the perfect size,

and it's like everybody knows everybody

when it comes to the music scene as I see it.

That's maybe why the music scene is as it is,

and was back then and is now.

Bang! Actually, the day I landed, moving here,

I met a friend in the airport. He said, "Moving to Bergen?

We're starting a club. Do you want to DJ there?"

And I said, "Okay, yeah."

MIKAL: In the early and mid-90s, most parties were illegal raves

and underground parties.

We discovered the techno scene in Bergen, basically,

first through our older friends.

And through them, we met with Bjørn Torske.

He was kind of our older idol, I guess.

I don't know, we just looked up to him. He was very into his music,

very knowledgeable about it.

He was five years older than us, or about five years older than us,

so we'd started dancing the way he was when we were younger.

Compared to other Norwegians, he has his own funkiness.

He has his own funk.

Bjørn is like a tale in himself, you know.

He's almost like a mythical figure over here.

And his last name also means cod in Norwegian.

-What does his first name mean? -Bjørn is a bear.

So he's a mixture of a cod and a bear.

He just... He has no limits in what he likes to use.

He just doesn't care about rules. That's very rock and roll, actually.

He seems to be the kind of enigmatic, the enigmatic genius of Norway.

He doesn't sort of put himself around much,

but everything I've heard has always been either interesting or brilliant.

RALPH: It's very hard to describe.

Catchy, quirky, strange, beautiful stuff

that I think no one else makes.

JOAKIM: I think everybody's looking at Bjørn Torske.

It's like, Bjørn Torske is kind of the godfather in a way.

He was the first, and he is just in his own bubble.

So, like, I would say that he is the pioneer,

but he's not the biggest and most popular.

But that, I guess, it's the way of the world when you're a pioneer.

MIKAL: Kahuun, Bjørn, and those guys had just started.

But I guess when I grew up, I was more into punk rock

and hardcore music, and then I met with Tore.

Tore, my friend, called himself Erot,

he also had a heart failure from birth.

He couldn't party hard. He couldn't run around.

I never drank any alcohol. He didn't drink alcohol,

so it was kind of... We had our own world, I guess.

Me and Tore, we quite soon became, I guess, part of the same scene

as much a driving force as everyone. We were all doing stuff.

I knew when I was 16, 17

that I would start a record shop as soon as I finished high school.

It became more of a youth club than a record store.

Bjørn would be there. Erot would be there.

Annie, Ralph Myerz, Röyksopp guys would drop by as well.

A lot of people kind of gathered around that shop.

RALPH: Primitive Records was the hangout spot

where we would always meet

and listen to the records for hours, drinking insane amounts of Coca Cola.

We were students hanging more in the shop

than we were actually studying.

I don't remember when Erot and Bjørn started working together.

BJØRN: He started coming up

with his earliest productions on cassette tapes, obviously,

and, well, yeah, this is kind of something.

ANNIE: Obviously, Bjørn was a bit older than Tore,

and I think Tore in many ways really looked up to Bjørn

and thought he was really an amazing guy, an amazing producer.

So I guess he found him inspiring, and they really inspired each other.

And he never went about anything with a half ass.

You know, he wanted to make it proper.

MIKAL: They found each other for love of the music,

so as soon as they found each other,

they kind of just started producing music.

I was deejaying in Bergen...

...just landed and met up with Bjørn as I always did.

And he said, "You have to bring your portable DAT player with you."

And I was like, "Why?" And he said, "I can't tell you."

I brought out my portable DAT player.

And Bjørn had this younger friend with him, and he said, "Meet Tore."

And without saying much, he just went,

"Put on your headphones." And Tore gave me a DAT

with his music.

I had to listen to it without any talk and was like, "Wow!"

But I immediately knew that this had to be released.

RALPH: His stuff didn't sound like anything else.

It has a very, very special swing to it.

GAUTE: Listening to "Song for Annie" by Erot for the first time,

it sounded like nothing else, like magic.

It sounded like a new start for... for music.

That was a moment for... like a turning point or something.

It's the otherworldliness.

It's the he's prepared to go past what's considered to be normal.

STEPHAN: Tore was always pushing, "Yeah, we should do this, do that."

So positive, you know?

Bjørn was maybe more the brain sometime, you know,

and Tore was just coming like... (WHOOPS)

It was going like lots of disco happiness.

Bjørn Torske suddenly discovered disco around '95,

and Erot discovered disco.

And it all kind of changed in a way.

I was initially into the more Chicago- and Detroit-based music.

It was all very house and techno.

We had kind of been laughing a bit about the '70s disco

being kind of kitschy, you know, but when we started digging

in the underground with less kitsch value and more groove,

we started pulling to that.

Pål Strangefruit had also a very great role in this influence

because he was the guy that promoted the disco sounds

of the '70s, '80s.

I think he's been an underrated massive influence

on a lot of the slightly younger generation

in Oslo in particular, but in Norway in general.

STRANGEFRUIT: I always wanted to be a DJ

since I was like 12 or something.

The music I got into was through basically mysterious tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Where were the tapes from?

STRANGEFRUIT: I don't know where. It was suddenly at my friend's table.

It was a red Maxell tape

filled with this great new music, synthesizer, disco.

It was actually a tape from Kiss FM in New York.

And I was very far from Paradise Garage,

but this was the music of Paradise Garage.

So it kind of like created an imaginary sense

of what New York was like.

It was just like a pure fantasy.

Musically, I felt that what I was playing was

a bit strange and exotic in a way.

He started doing his national radio show on Saturdays,

and that was very disco-fied thing.

The good thing in Norway, you had terrestrial radio

like the BBC, like the NRK.

They had shows from Norwegian DJs on Saturdays.

They had Olle Abstract first and then DJ Strangefruit.

Me and Olle was pretty much left to do what we wanted to do.

OLLE: That was quite an important role

for quite a few of the bedroom producers

in the outskirts of the big cities, in the small villages around Norway.

On Saturdays, we had nowhere to go to.

To parties, we had to drive around with a radio.

DISKJOKKE: Olle Abstract's radio show sounded totally different

from all sorts of music that I'd been exposed to all my life.

It really caught me.

MAGNUS: Strangefruit was good at promoting local music.

He was like the guy that spread it all across Norway.

They got influenced by listening to good music on Saturday nights.

It could've been a trance show.

It could've been a trance show for 14 years.

We'd probably sound a bit different in Norway now.

BJØRN: When the artists of Bergen

started evolving, especially around Erot,

Mikal was thinking, yeah, maybe he could do something there.

The three of us did a party that made enough money

to start Tellé Records

called Den Elleville Festen.

MIKAL: It was inspired by a great movie.

-Animal House. -Animal House.

MIKAL: So they're gonna save their fraternity house

by having a toga party.

So we were supposed to save, kind of, our scene by having a party,

and the money that we made would go to printing records.

MIKAL: So we were allowed to sell

1,200 tickets, I think, and we probably had

about 1,500 to 2,000 people kind of crammed into this.

And we had to turn away probably a few hundred people.

BJØRN: This was when people were crawling up on the roof

-and coming in by the ventilators. -Yeah, yeah.

And the roof windows to get in.

I remember we were playing.

It just turned into this crazy explosion

of dance and fun.

The whole show was stopped because they were afraid

that the floor couldn't actually stand the jumping.

It went, in many ways, too well.

MIKAL: Erot, he did the design of the logo.

I wanted to do pop songs of the electronic music that I liked.

So we were very inspired by Motown when we started,

so it was 7 inches with a big center hole.

The first release is a 7-inch by Erot on one side

and a side project of Bjørn Torske called "Torske Mendel Explosion"

on the other side.

We probably spent a year selling those 500 records,

and then the next one, I think, took six months to sell.

And for every release, it went faster and faster.

When we came to the fourth or fifth release,

we always sold out on the day that they arrived.

GAUTE: We were looking to Bergen and were impressed

about what they were doing.

Being creative and doing new stuff without thinking.

The Tellé stuff was more from a kind of left field pop angle,

and "The Greatest Hit" by Annie was the one that really caught my ear.

The first time I actually met Mikal Telle was at a rave party,

and that's the way I got to know him.

Erot, he was there. And, yeah, I met him, and...

And... yeah, then we became really good friends,

and we started doing music together.

MIKAL: When I heard "The Greatest Hit," it was just...

You remember when you heard the track instantly, it's, "This is something."

Has the sample been cleared in "The Greatest Hit"?

(LAUGHS) Well, yeah.

Well, you should maybe ask Loaded about that. I think he...

MAN: Sounds like a no.

He sampled Madonna. You know?

-And... -Nobody's been sued yet.

After a week, we started to get like a lot of interest from labels

and, yeah, and journalists and... yeah.

Mikal came on and put out all these 7 inches with brilliant music,

and then it started just, you know, exploding.

ANNIE: So many people doing music at that time.

So Röyksopp had a record and he released their record

and same with me with The Greatest Hit.

RALPH: Everybody were helping out and hoping that people would succeed.

It was a very good vibe.

MIKAL: I don't think I've wrapped my mind around what happened,

feeling of actually communicating with the rest of the world.

INTERVIEWER: Were you surprised that it was so successful so quickly?

Yeah, yeah. Astonished, yeah. Really.

KAHUUN: It kind of defined the sound of Norway, I guess, at that moment.

The first Bergen wave that's just a...

you know, a terminology created by journalists, because suddenly,

a lot of artists come up with music at the same time,

and they call it a wave.

The other thing that I really like about them is their insistence

on releasing loads of music with Norwegian titles

that mean nothing to anyone else.

It's so funny when you do these names

and people like try to pronounce it from abroad. It's like... (SNICKERS)

MAN 1: "Jeg Vil Være Søppelmann."

Jeg vig... Oh.

MAN 2: 2000 Isvar Fra Morellviene.

2000 Isvar Fra Morellviene.

MAN 1: "Tur I Maskinparken."

That's a tricky word that. Maskinparken Tu I...

And it kind of became the norm, you know.

Full Pupp, it means a full titty.

But it also means the whole shit.

Erot, which is like Tore backwards.

Then you have Jeg Vil Være Søppelmann,

which is like the most famous one of Bjørn's.

That means, "I like to become the garbage man."

(LAUGHS)

Which is weird because I've never seen Bjørn work.

BJØRN: That was in '99, I think, it was released.

It's a very percussive thing. It did quite well, actually.

He went so mental on the beat production there.

And suddenly, everyone was raving and going mad about this track.

And Danny Tenaglia played like two copies for 25 minutes

in Miami the same year,

with Carl Cox standing on the bar going crazy,

and we Norwegians were like, "Yeah! Fuck yeah!"

I had to ask him how did that track happen

and he's just like, "I'm sorry,

but I was really, really drunk that night,

and I can't remember how I made it." (CHUCKLES)

EMILIO: That is one of the best Norwegian house records of all time.

It felt like there was a strong scene there.

There was a lot of DJs.

There was, you know, a lot of parties going on.

The mid- to late-90s scene, club scene, in Oslo and Bergen

was very healthy.

Lovely music, lovely people.

Yeah, all the good stuff you need to have a club scene.

OLLE: It was a dark little space that used to be like public toilets

and it was converted into a nice little futuristic,

metallic-like little box of a club with a big sound system.

G-HA: At that time, it was like...

it seems to me like every night was just magic.

It was crazy like three nights a week.

First time we went, you thought, "This is nice.

It'll be a nice sort of intimate,

like playing in a bar or something." Little did we know. (LAUGHS) Yeah.

CONRAD: Absolutely insane. Mental.

Proper, proper mental.

BILL: That was a bit of a legendary club at the time.

I think it got voted in Music's "50 Best Clubs in the World."

OLLE: Erot had his first DJ gig there outside Bergen.

One of the legendary nights he played live the first time,

and that was in Skansen, and that was absolutely crazy.

MAGNUS: He resonated with people outside of Norway as well, you know.

We were like hearing stories of, "Erot has been to Japan,

and they fucking love his music."

We were like, "Is that possible?

How can this little boy from Norway go over there and play music?"

This is a big deal.

We got so much offers and...

Suddenly, like...

We didn't have plans about what we wanted to do with the project,

but I talked to Tore and said,

"Okay, maybe we should do some more songs."

And I had some ideas. He had some ideas.

And the plan was to do an album.

But, of course, then Tore got really sick and...

I guess it was like half a year after.

He was starting to feel weaker and weaker,

and he got into the hospital.

And he got really, really sick and...

I was visiting him, and of course,

I really hoped that he was gonna be better and...

...which he didn't.

And, yeah, then after one and a half year or two years, he died.

(RAIN PATTERING)

AUNT: Here's Tore and he's done brilliantly on his physics exam.

-Haven't you, Tore? -Well, it went quite well.

AUNT: That's good. What are you going to do

after that hurdle has now been just accomplished?

-What are you going to do? -Well...

...I'm gonna focus on music making.

KENN: He could have died the first 24 hours,

because he had a very serious heart condition,

but the doctor saved his life.

Then he had the next operation when he was 10 years old.

He always lived on borrowed time

because they didn't know exactly how to correct the disease.

His heart condition made it impossible for him

to be like a football player or something like that,

so he had to have some hobby.

(SPEAKING NORWEGIAN)

(SPEAKING NORWEGIAN)

I always... I don't have any memories of him

without Mikal or Annie.

Yeah, we were really small when they started seeing each other,

so she was kind of like a big sister to us as well.

He was a really funny guy, first of all.

I remember he was really funny.

And he had a lot of sides to him, a very interesting person.

Erot was...

Well, he was one of the nerdiest guys I knew.

He would know everything.

He had a brain that was probably too large for his own good,

so he was huge... Well, he had knowledge about everything.

(SPEAKS NORWEGIAN)

KENN: He said, "I'm going to Japan."

"What are you going to do in Japan?" "I am going to play music."

Maybe this was too much for Tore,

because when he came home, it did go half a year,

then he started to get ill.

They realized that his lungs were now also damaged.

So we kept the optimism,

and somehow, we thought it would be okay.

He was ready for the operation, and he was just waiting.

And something happened. We don't know.

In fact, we don't really know

exactly what was the situation when he died.

But it was in the middle of the night, and the nurse,

she just came into his room and saw that he was...

He was not breathing. He had no pulse.

Anna and Mikal were only a few kilometers away.

They came to the hospital,

and we had some hours together with Tore.

And that... that felt very good for us.

Yeah. And... how sad it was, how good it was,

that they were there, yeah.

I miss him as the boy he was.

KENN: The funeral, it was amazing because...

And hundreds and hundreds of people,

it was crowded inside the church and outside.

I couldn't see anything.

I was empty, but I saw all these people.

That was very special.

There is certain people that are, yeah, building things

and holding things together. He was one of those.

Of course, for me, it was a big loss and...

But also, I think, for... for sort of the scene in general.

You would be correct to call those records seminal that he made

because listen to them.

People should be aware of the equipment he used

to make those records.

People would laugh now. Your phone is more powerful.

The stuff he did freed a lot of producers

from what they believed was right and wrong.

Producers like him is really necessary for music to grow.

It's weird how it works that like the saddest thing happens

at the same time as some of the funniest things, like.

So at the same time as he died, everyone was sad,

like Röyksopp got signed and did really well.

Ralph Myerz did and... and...

some... not some electronic music, but Kings of Convenience.

Like, they all did pretty well and became quite well-known names.

So people went on having success,

but the scene wasn't as tight after that.

The band kind of blew up after releasing our Special EP.

It was starting getting airplay heavily on the radio,

and not only in Norway, but in the US and Europe.

RALPH: And we toured all over the world.

Our kind of reputation as a live act was helping us with the record sales.

The shows were very energetic

and a lot more up-tempo than the albums.

That combination just kind of worked very well for us.

In the early 2000s, we had Röyksopp, who went very large.

But suddenly, Erlend Øye, who had been in Kings of Convenience was

Whitest Boy Alive.

I'd hear things and think, "Sounds like it came out of Norway."

You could tell something special was gonna come,

a sound could come out of there.

RALPH: The next wave of people

kind of directed the spotlight from Bergen to Oslo.

What really turned me on, I think, to... things that were happening

was the... was the second wave.

MATT: It was just really kind of spacey

and all these odd, different influences.

Over the next year, couple of years,

you just started hearing more coming out of Oslo.

GAUTE: Oslo feels now like a natural home for that type of sound

because there's so many brilliant musicians

making that type of sound from Oslo.

And if you walk into any club,

chances are that you'll hear that type of music.

I'd describe it as a weird, strange melting pot

of, I suppose, '70s disco.

Space echo and tape delay.

Eighties synth pop.

Bright synthesizers, usually played on vintage hardware.

Experimental noise in there.

Live, slightly off-kilter basslines.

You've kind of got the sound in a nutshell there, I think.

So we referred to it a lot in iDJ magazine as "Scandolearic."

It was sort of what we used to call heroin disco.

Kind of modern disco with a lot of effects.

A lot of dub stuff and...

Skrangle disco.

New disco, space disco, cosmic disco.

Yeah, like, slippy-sloppy, sloppy house, you know?

One-legged disco.

It's really hard to say

whether Norwegian music has particular characteristics

because I think it's more to do with individual producers.

Proggy disco, I suppose you'd call it, that's become a thing.

And if anyone started it, I'd say it's Lindstrøm.

LINDSTRØM: A lot of the stuff that at least I was making

was trying to use inspiration

from all of the music that I've been doing,

like... like from church music to folk music.

Rather than being embarrassed about my musical past,

I was more like, well,

trying to implement that music into my own music.

So that's basically it.

"I Feel Space" feels like a beefed-up version

of Giorgio Moroder, you know, from "I Feel Love."

That record was enormous. It was everywhere.

Lindstrøm is the biggest influence on everyone,

because he was the only guy at that time

who actually put something out that was noticed and big.

House music was lying a bit dead, you know?

It kind of kick-started a new type of vibe.

LINDSTRØM: Looking back now, I realize that maybe it had

a bigger impact than I really understand.

(CROWD CHEERING)

BLACKBELT: Thomas has been a fantastic ambassador abroad,

and he's pretty huge in Norway as well.

MAGNUS: As a DJ, he's one of those guys that can make anything blend.

He plays eclectic music without losing the energy.

BILL: He's a really, really good DJ.

I would say I was probably mostly inspired by disco,

by all these like loose rhythms

and, you know, trying to find a way

to make the music sound not too mechanical.

He was like not really into club music,

but a lot of like weird stuff.

And we kind of started doing stuff together.

It was Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas when I started to go,

"There's something going on here."

JAMES: Lindstrøm and Prins have been able to take

the best of those kind of sounds that were popularized

in the '70s and '80s and bring it up to date

and create something that's, you know...

you know, a nod to the past, but always kind of forward-looking.

We both kind of like played everything we got our hands on.

We just played, like used this as percussion and...

And did a lot of weird stuff.

PRINS: We probably didn't know exactly how things should be done.

LINDSTRØM: It didn't sound professional, but it kind of maybe

gave the music a more like homemade feel or something.

(LINDSTRØM LAUGHS)

I guess there was some kind of a hype after we did a lot of remixes.

PETE: You're listening to Radio 1. Welcome to the Essential Mix.

Another installment, a bit special this week.

Our guests are two amazing DJs and producers

from the land of Röyksopp.

It's already a contender for Essential Mix of the year.

From Norway, Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas.

PRINS: Doing stuff like Essential Mix,

at the time, that was actually a big deal.

CARL: When Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas landed an Essential Mix,

a really important milestone in any DJ-producer's career,

it was really influential and seminal.

And I guess that is, if you wanted to pinpoint a moment,

that would be maybe when you'd say,

"Ah, Norwegian dance music has arrived."

CONRAD: I think what Thomas and Hans-Peter Lindstrøm did

was awaken...

It's like a sinful thing. People were like,

"Oh, you can't really listen to high-energy, driven music.

You can't listen to those arpeggiated basslines.

That's music for gay clubs." You know?

And they just... just tore that down.

CONRAD: From that day until now, the floodgates opened, you know.

That is the sound now without question.

All of a sudden, we had all this response from everywhere.

If you want do this remix, go here to play, there to play.

We got a bit scared because it kind of blew up

way out of proportion, you know.

We both had way too much success to really handle it.

And we ended up almost burning the bridges

by getting tied up in having to do these three remixes this week

and kind of ended up taking on too much, I think.

We made a pretty conscious decision to weird out on the next record.

BILL: Norwegian musicians have absorbed all kinds of oddball ideas

that they distill into their music.

DIGBY: With Norwegian dance music,

there seems to be less structure to it.

Experimented a little bit more with beats,

tracks that evolve a lot more.

And they seem to have a bit more fun and take a few more risks.

CARL: I think there's a certain cheekiness, a certain sort of playful

almost mischievous nature to some of Prins Thomas' and Lindstrøm's stuff.

And I'd say that has been an influence on a lot of producers

to try new things out.

It's been fascinating to watch Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas

bubbling under for years.

And kind of, people have been aware,

but it's not sort of gone as big as perhaps I thought it could do,

or perhaps they had the ability to, and certainly the talent.

But to be around and see Todd Terje

just take that uniquely Norwegian sound and elements of it

and really make it his own, but just...

That album's been huge.

It's sort of a pinnacle of what's been happening

and bubbling under for ages with those guys.

But now, Todd Terje did it, didn't he?

It's cheeky, I think. He's cheeky and it's like, yeah.

I don't know, something that I can't put my finger on.

But it's like, yeah, you've got to dance to it, you know.

"It's very difficult to not like it.

The music makes you happy.

CONRAD: He has got even more of a pop sensibility about him.

I think he finds that effortless.

Hopefully, he'll sit down with somebody

and deliver some amazing songs for us,

because I think that's well within his range.

BILL: Been pretty amazing to watch him go from

being a very keen teenager to being someone

who's feeling at home working with Bryan Ferry.

It's pretty incredible, really, what he's done.

He's just enormously talented.

Well, he's incredibly musical

and he's really accomplished as a keyboard player and programmer.

BRYAN: A great all-round musician, you know?

And I was amazed at how quick he was,

and I've worked with good people.

So he's very good at creating atmospheres and drama.

I saw it in person when I did the festival here in Oslo.

The crowd was going crazy. They really loved his music.

It was a huge audience of very young people who...

Actually, of all ages, which I think is good,

who were really into it.

MATT: Inspector Norse was enormous.

In 20, 30, 40 years' time,

people will still think of that as a classic disco record,

possibly, an all-time dance music classic.

BILL: There's a simplicity to the music he makes.

All great music is really about simplicity, I think.

Almost all great records, something simple about them,

you listen and think, "I could've done that." The fact is you didn't.

(CROWD CHEERING)

MAN: He seems to have gone global more than anyone.

What do you think makes his music...?

Yeah, why do you think it's gotten so big?

Well, he's...

For the first, he's particular in his ways, like Erot was.

He's very like into how he's gonna make it.

Obviously, it's good music, good dance music.

(CROWD CHEERING)

First impression I have of Erot's musical adventures,

it was kind of a rave sort of thing

with a lot of silly samples and stuff.

It was really funny.

I don't know if any of those tapes still exist,

but what I know is that Todd Terje...

And his big sister was a friend of Erot,

so he got to listen to these tapes when he was like 10 or 12.

I just got to know last year when Terje told me,

so that was kind of funny.

STRANGEFRUIT: Like, in Oslo now, you have

one of the most happening musical cities.

There's loads of concerts here. There's loads of food stores.

So in many ways,

what has happened here in the last 25 years

has maybe happened in England in the last 70 years.

It's just happened in a much faster scale.

There are a lot of great Norwegian musicians.

They've had a very big kind of imprint on music.

Lindstrøm, Thomas, Terje's breaking out definitely influenced

world dance music, no doubt.

To me, they are the people who really, really blew Norway up.

STRANGEFRUIT: Disco never happened here in the first place.

It had to be a new generation to see the wonders of it,

so we basically discovered disco

20 years later and made our own version of it.

Norwegian dance music now has got a blueprint.

Once there's a blueprint

and once it's ingrained in a musical culture,

it's self-sustaining. It'll go on. People will continue

making records like that. They'll put their own twists,

but it'll still have that distinctly Norwegian feel.

Norwegian identity, it's strange, because you can't...

...go anywhere in the world and not bring yourself with you.

So it's like, I'm always gonna be Norwegian.

I'm always gonna be Northern Norwegian.

Yeah, maybe it's important.

Maybe it's important that I'm Norwegian.

BJØRN: There's definitely stuff happening

with the younger generations

and also in the dance music, house department, yeah.

Exciting stuff.

MIKAL: When we grew up, we didn't care

what other people in Bergen or in Norway had to say.

Several young new producers have done exactly the same.

They haven't kind of talked to us.

They've just gone out and done the same thing.

I find it really cool that there is like a new wave of things happening

and people kind of not caring about what the elders do.

I have no idea if we had any effect on the world of music,

but we had fun, though.

My favorite Norwegian record ever?

Wow, uh...

-Um... -Umm...

-Um... -Hmm.

Oh, that's a tough one.

-That's a tough one. I... -Um...

-Um... -Ugh.

-Ooh. -Wow.

My favorite, favorite ever Norwegian track?

-Of all time? -Well, um...

-I... I think... -Um, that...

-(SIGHS) -(SMACKS LIPS)

(EXHALES)

Let me think a little bit on that and I'll... Yeah.