Memoirs from Norway’s underground dance pioneers: Andy Swatland #7

Travelling around Norway in the Spring is a fantastic experience. During my trip in 2013, we hooked up with the key movers and shakers involved in forming the country’s house and disco scenes. I was lucky enough to touch down in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø, and many weird and beautiful places in the surrounding areas. I travelled with Ben Davis, who was directing the film we were working on, formed from interviews with the key people from the dance scene plus Paper Recording’s label artists such as Those Norwegians. We were also curious about the country, geography, and people and how they influenced each other’s creative passions. This film had a working title of ‘Northern Disco Lights – The Rise and Rise of Norwegian House Music’. During our visit, we spoke to as many of the DJs, producers, promoters and radio stations as we could and decided to publish these best bits that sum up the trip, the film and our findings.

Andy Swatland was manager of Rocky Platebar [record shop] in Tromsø, he now lives in Kristiansand, Norway with his family. 

Where did you first get into electronic music in the UK or Norway and how?
I had been travelling as an international DJ for about 3 years visiting Denmark, Germany, France, Luxembourg and my agent asked if I fancied gigging in Norway? It sounded like fun, so I agreed and ended resident DJ for a club called Jonas which was based at the SAS Royal Hotel (now the Radisson). A friend of mine ran a small record/video department in Tonofoto AS who moved to Tønsberg and recommended me for his position, I then became a resident of Tromsø.

Rocky Platebar Record bag

Rocky Platebar Record bag

Where did you buy your dance imports?
As a DJ, I was surprised how behind the Norwegian record stores were regarding new, trending music and saw a business opportunity. I got in contact with a wholesaler in Manchester called Streetbeat and started importing 12” singles. These were pretty much non-existent in Tromsø. Streetbeat had all the latest stuff such as Depeche Mode, Human League, Japan, Scritti Politti, Duran Duran and Frankie Goes to Hollywood plus the latest remixes. Some albums were released earlier in other countries (e.g. The Smiths, The Cure, Yello), so I imported these as well. I also imported ADDA DJ cases for the DJs, all of whom used to get their vinyl from me. At Rocky’s, Per was a regular customer, as was Rune.

What radio station/shows were people listening to?
Pretty much the only radio station at the time was Radio Luxembourg. I did a couple of gigs with Tony Prince & Mark Wesley from the station while in Denmark. Student radio took off and I had a two hour Saturday show for a called Rocky Radio to help promote my shop; Rocky Platebar (Records).

What genre was the most popular, disco, house or techno?
Disco was mainstream, while Techno and House were more niche genres. Per and Rune, both great guys and were pioneers in Tromsø and were on the cutting-edge of electronic dance.

Per Martinsen buying tunes in Rocky's Platebar, Tromsø

Andy Swatland’s record shop Rocky’s Platebar circa 1988, can you see Per Martinsen?

 

These excerpts were taken from a Facebook Messenger interview conducted as part of the research for the Northern Disco Lights feature documentary film.

© Paper Vision Ltd (Pete Jenkinson/Ben Davis)

Recorded on a Zoom H2.

Transcribed by Fingertips, Louie Callegari and Tongue Tied.

Memoirs from Norway’s underground dance pioneers: Hans T. Zeiner-Henriksen #5

Travelling around Norway in the Spring is a fantastic experience. During my trip in 2013, we hooked up with the key movers and shakers involved in forming the country’s house and disco scenes. I was lucky enough to touch down in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø, and many weird and beautiful places in the surrounding areas. I travelled with Ben Davis, who was directing the film we were working on, formed from interviews with the key people from the dance scene plus Paper Recording’s label artists such as Those Norwegians. We were also curious about the country, geography, and people and how they influenced each other’s creative passions. This film had a working title of ‘Northern Disco Lights – The Rise and Rise of Norwegian House Music’. During our visit, we spoke to as many of the DJs, producers, promoters and radio stations as we could and decided to publish these best bits that sum up the trip, the film and our findings.

Hans T. Zeiner-Henriksen is Associate Professor, Department of Musicology at University of Oslo

Hi Hans, how are Norwegians regarded by the rest of the world? I think we’re seen as a safe area of the world, calm and safe, a bit outside. Our economy is very good it’s an expensive country because of our oil resources so it’s an easy place to be.

Do you think the discovery of the oil changed how Norway thinks about itself? Well yes, it’s been a long time now since the oil, we started getting oil resources and during these years we have kind of grown from being similar to other European countries to have this strong economy. Especially in the last decade, we don’t have any economic problems.

Do you think it’s affected Norwegian creativity? Yes, if you grow up in a country in a situation where you feel that things are going to go well, you don’t really have to stress too much to survive; it’s then that you can move into more creative work.

Do you think Norwegian music has certain characteristics? That depends on what you label on each music because it comes in a lot of sizes and a lot of shapes. I think if you consider Norwegian music as Norwegian folk music then it will have different instruments, the Hardanger fiddle which is local to Norway. The music that you would play on that instrument has travelled from other countries and been influenced by other cultures. Classical music was important at the end of the 19th century and so it was important for building the Norwegian identity. We said goodbye to Denmark and then Sweden and became our own nation. It was important that we had not only the music but the literature, the theatre, all the things that became an important part of Norwegian-ness. At that time, it was considered that this music was Norwegian and that it has something that is specifically Norwegian about it. A lot of us, growing up in Norway would consider classical music as very Norwegian, maybe because we had already heard it played alongside landscape footage in films. We have also heard it with Norwegian fairy tales and those connections are very strong. When you refer to Norwegian Jazz or popular music it’s difficult because there are so many influences and today you can just switch on your device and get the whole world into your living room.

Why do you think Norwegians have such a strong connection to nature? We have a strong connection to nature, especially my generation. There’s an understanding that the nature of Norway is beautiful, and you should use it, go on Sunday walks, have your vacations in the mountains in your small cabin, go skiing, of course, all Norwegian’s go skiing! I’m not sure if it’s the same with the younger generation but it’s part of our society and important to our culture.

Do you think there’s a connection between nature, landscape and electronic musical sounds? I feel there’s a connection between the landscape and the music, we have album sleeves with photos of the landscape, so the connection is understood. You can kind of connect snow, cold ice with sounds that are similar. For example, if you have an echo, you can have a warm echo. If you add a lot of reverb to it, you create a sound that is a warm echo, but you can also have a cold echo, it’s less reverb and the sound will be brighter. So there might be elements already present in the music but sometimes you have to imagine these connections into the music because if you just listen to music without any kind of understanding, knowledge or photos it’s rare that you would hear these connections. You can see the connection in artwork, titles that will have some association with nature and the landscape. And of course, music is very much about movement and then you have movement or a drive forward. There’s rhythm and you feel there’s kind of a movement. You often set this movement in some sort of landscape.

FEEL THE FJORDS: Urban club culture and Arctic scenery in the music of the Norwegian duo Röyksopp.

FEEL THE FJORDS: Urban club culture and Arctic scenery in the music of the Norwegian duo Röyksopp.

Do you think there’s a Tromsø sound that has been formed by its landscape and geography? I think there are many other influences in Tromsø’s music as well as the natural ones. Tromsø is a coastal area so there’s not permanent ice there the whole time. It’s not like Solvær, an island near the North Pole, Tromsø is more Arctic than Oslo. You have sun, snow, ice and the ‘northern lights’ and a connection to natural experiences when you live in Tromsø; to what extent that has directly influenced these musicians it’s hard to say.

Why do you think Norwegian producers are so collaborative? In Norway, you’re don’t compete too much, and in the schools, it is not very competitive; we’re busy trying to make people work together and collaborate.

How important to Norwegian music is national identity? Identity is important for everybody everywhere. We are proud of our country, nature and landscapes. I think some of the electronic dance producers felt that they were on the outside. They didn’t live in Britain but were influenced by the music and urban sounds that they heard from there. It’s a kind of collaboration between these different identities. There is a very strong sense of wanting to be culturally cool or hip in the dance music community. It was very important to be one of the hipsters or VIPs jumping the queue and getting into all the cool places in Oslo’s club culture during the nineties. This is important when you talk about identity, it is false to be hip and cool. Norwegian nature and landscape are not really that cool to Norwegians. For example, when they are portrayed in a British magazine they would say ‘Feel the Fjords’ or the ‘ultimate chillout’ linking directly to the connection with nature in Norway. In this sense, artists may feel pressure to connect with the environment or even fight against it. Maybe you can see a sense of irony in many of the photos where they present themselves in the natural environment in an ironic way?

Norwegian music seems to have a sense of mischief and humour. Why do you think that is? Maybe some of the same reasons. Mischief can be used to show that you don’t think things are that important or I’m not struggling to make a success in somewhere, this is just something I do for the fun of it. This is just a part of it, but I think the ‘cleverness’ in making good dance music is much more important. The production of tracks with good grooves and melodies are more important elements in becoming a success.

What is it about Norway that is considered ‘exotic’ to the rest of the world? I don’t think it’s that exotic to grow up here. We are on the outskirts of central Europe. Of course, there are the clichés about living in Norway, the country life, the snow, the cold winters but now we have warm houses and it’s not that awful. Norway’s ‘exotic’ label is also created abroad when (music and culture) journalists write about Norway, it’s a way to start writing about Norwegian artists. As a journalist it’s difficult to write about music, for instance, how are you going to talk about the ‘sounds’ of the music? ‘ It’s easier to start with something specific and Norway has mountains, ice, snow, dark season and Tromsø being so far north, it has all of these.

How important do you think Röyksopp’s Melody AM was for global recognition of Norwegian dance music? We must go first back to the eighties and A-ha’s breakthrough with ‘Take On Me’ and ‘Hunting High and Low’ was also very important for Norwegian artists. It showed that it was possible for Norwegians to make it in the US, England and the rest of the world. After that, quite a few Norwegians artists were successful international in places like France, Japan, the Philippines and other exotic countries. For example, in the late nineties, Röyksopp and Kings of Convenience (Röyksopp in 2001) were successful in England and globally and this inspired Norwegian artists. It’s difficult living in remote locations but when artists are successful it presents an opportunity; recently we had Ylvis, ‘The Fox (What does the Fox Say?)’. It shows that there are new ways of distribution, online or YouTube to make your start. You don’t have to travel to England or contact with a British record label to be promoted, now if you have something good you can go for it on your own. ‘Melody AM’ was released at the right time and showed that dance music can be taken into a different place. For example, the track, ‘Poor Leno’, it’s very danceable, but it also has very strong melodic themes. ‘Eple’, uses sampling techniques in a cool way, taking a tiny piece of improvisation and making something fantastic out of it. The album was very creative and did fun (mischievous) things with samples and the music. It had great grooves and strong melodic themes and brilliant vocalists such as Anneli Drecker and Erlend Øye who sing on ‘Poor Leno’ and ‘Remind Me’.

From where has Norwegian music absorbed its wide range of influences? Growing up in Norway, we only had NRK Radio which did not play very much popular music apart from the Top 10. We had a strong economy and disposable income and we’d buy our own records. My local youth club held a disco every Thursday where I learned to dance to disco music, club music that came a few years later. We bought records and spent a lot of time at each other’s houses listening to what we considered good music. Everybody has their own [formative] listening experiences with music. This is enormous to the artist and producers, every different tune they have listened to during the years growing up; that creates identity. You can explore that identity to a much deeper level. I didn’t know very much Kraftwerk before I got into club music and then I really got interested also in them, exploring their early releases. In Norway, we had the record stores and we had friends who also had records!

How is homegrown dance music regarded by the establishment now? The national broadcaster NRK or cultural politics did not support dance music back then. They play it but they generally supported Norwegian classical music composers, folk music and jazz and acoustic singer-songwriters that sang in Norwegian. While people that made pop music, sang in English or worked in the dance music scene was not supported but they did have tracks broadcast on radio. There was lesser national interest around the success of Röyksopp or Todd Terje, compared to classical music, jazz and other events that are considered culturally important for Norway.

How do you think Norwegian music has evolved from the 70s? A-ha were important, their synth-pop music was produced by programming synthesisers, but we must go into the late eighties, early nineties before something really exciting happens and it came from Tromsø. It started with Bel Canto who were Geir Jenssen, Anneli Drecker, and Nils Johansen. Geir Jenssen went on to become Biosphere.  There were a lot of artists and electronic music producers coming from Tromsø such as Rune Lindbæk and Bjørn Torske. It started the style of dance music that is famous today. When Röyksopp released ‘Melody AM’ it opened it up for other artists, then came Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas and Olle Abstract and now Todd Terje.

How influential do you think Bjørn Torske has been? Bjørn Torske has been influential when it comes to using Norwegian track and album titles. His name, Bjørn Torske, Torske means cod (the fish). So, he’s given himself an artist name which Norwegian people think is fun. I think he encouraged the use of Norwegian words in this way, for instance, why would Röyksopp call a song Eple? It’s the traditional Norwegian name for a fruit. There’s probably a link to the Bob James album (with an Apple on the cover), from the sample used in the track? The band name Röyksopp is based on a Norwegian word with a Swedish spelling.  It’s means mushroom. The ones that blow smoke if you step on them.  It’s small, white. I think it’s called a puff mushroom in the UK. There might also be an association with magic mushrooms as a drug. You step on it and something amazing comes out!

Röyksopp and Todd Terje seem to have the most success internationally. Do you see similarities in their music? It’s easy to state the differences. Todd Terje is much more instrumental and seldom uses vocals. While Röyksopp use more vocalists. Similarly, they both use strong melodic themes paired with good grooves and beats that you can follow with your body and dance.

Why do you think Norwegian electronic music has a strong affinity with disco? We grew up dancing to disco music, and maybe coincidentally, but somewhere along the line people started to explore this connection. House music has a connection to disco music, such as with the fun, the irony and outrageous clothing of disco, which also connects to being mischievous.

Can you hear Norway’s influence being reflected by international artists and producers? I hope that our influence has been great melodies and grooves that evolve.

DJs seem to be very open-minded here, why do you think that is? Because we are outsiders? If you’re in the centre of cultural activity you’re more worried about what’s right or what’s wrong. We can explore different landscapes with nobody telling us how to do it.

Tell us about Röyksopp’s ‘Poor Leno’ video? It’s very traditional Norwegian at the beginning when they fly over landscapes that are very mountainous and head towards the sea surrounded by Arctic coastal landscapes, few houses, lots of skiing. Then you have this person, Poor Leno, but it’s not a person, it’s a strange creature with hipness and cool. Leno longs to go back to the mountains and it can, of course, be understood as a link to traditional Norway.  It’s not clichéd, and it’s cool to still have connections to Norway and it’s the environment. Musically, there’s one specific part that builds up, almost like going up the mountainside. Then suddenly it’s like you have come to the top of the mountain and see the amazing view; there are definite metaphorical associations between the music and nature in the video.

Do you think Röyksopp have a strong sense of melancholia? There is an element of melancholia but if it’s specific to a Nordic sound I’m not sure. They do use minor chords which are also used in deep house productions which they might have been influenced by.

These excerpts were recorded and transcribed with some parts of the interview being used in the final print of the Northern Disco Lights feature documentary film.

© Paper Vision Ltd (Pete Jenkinson/Ben Davis)

Recorded on a Zoom H2.

Transcribed by Fingertips, Louie Callegari and Tongue Tied.

Memoirs from Norway’s underground dance pioneers: Kolbjørn Lyslo #6

Travelling around Norway in the Spring is a fantastic experience. During my trip in 2013, we hooked up with the key movers and shakers involved in forming the country’s house and disco scenes. I was lucky enough to touch down in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø, and many weird and beautiful places in the surrounding areas. I travelled with Ben Davis, who was directing the film we were working on, formed from interviews with the key people from the dance scene plus Paper Recording’s label artists such as Those Norwegians. We were also curious about the country, geography, and people and how they influenced each other’s creative passions. This film had a working title of ‘Northern Disco Lights – The Rise and Rise of Norwegian House Music’. During our visit, we spoke to as many of the DJs, producers, promoters and radio stations as we could and decided to publish these best bits that sum up the trip, the film and our findings.

Kolbjørn Lyslo is an electronic music producer from Tromsø, Norway, was a key stakeholder in the Tromsø music community from the later eighties and worked with Aedena Cycle, Röyksopp and produces house music under the name of Doc L Junior.

Hi Kolbjørn, what was it like growing up in Tromsø? Tromsø is a small town in the far north of Norway with more culture than most other towns this isolated from the rest of Europe or the rest of the world; it feels bigger than it is. Growing up in Tromsø we had a great sense of freedom and a lot of space to explore. Culturally, Tromsø was kind of avant-garde. When I was a kid, there was a lot of punk music. We had a local radio that played a lot of new stuff that people in this country had never heard. I remember I was about 9 and an older sister of a friend of mine gave me a cassette tape with Depeche Mode on one side and The Cure on the other side. And this kind of started the whole electronic music thing for me. I was 10 when I bought my first synthesiser, it was Poly 800 Korg.

Did you look up to the previous generations? I knew them by face because Per was working in the record shop and had heard of Bjørn Torske because he was into Depeche Mode as well, we were kind of on our own. We had a covers band that played Depeche Mode music. After a while, I hooked up with Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge and Gaute Barlindhaug, we hooked up with Bjørn Torske and Per Martinsen after that. We kind of knew that if we wanted to put out music then we could just do it. They just did it so why couldn’t we? So, yes, they did make an impression on us. There was this record shop called Rocky Plate Bar and the unique thing about this place was it was run by an English guy who ended up in Tromsø as a travelling DJ. There was a lot of travelling DJ’s from the UK and Australia in the hotel circuit and club circuit. In the eighties, they had nowhere to get their records. This guy, Andy Swatland settled in Tromsø and set up a direct import link with the UK supplying all the travelling DJ’s in northern and southern Norway as he imported stuff that never made it to the regular shops. So, Tromsø became very important to the DJ circuit as Rocky Platebar was the main store for that kind of electronic music. I was just a kid then, but as I said I was into Depeche Mode and I found a lot of music that was hard to find in other Norwegian cities at that time. I bought my first house record at Rocky, the Whistle Song by Frank Knuckles. I remember it very well.

Alien Nation flyer, circa 1990

 

Did it feel like you were creating your own scene? We were very much on our own and there weren’t many people our age into the same stuff. We didn’t feel isolated, we were just into our own thing. It was just the way things were, we were into electronic music and it seemed nobody else was. I remember my first party on the 16th of May 1990, at a place called the Brygga Ungdommens Hus, (the Youth Centre) put on by Bjørn & Per. I guess it was the first dance party in Tromsø that a crowd of around 50 friends and locals attended.

When did you put out your first record? We sent out a lot of demos in 1992 and one was sent to the Planet E (Detroit, USA) record label and the owner Carl Craig called us. He wanted to put out the demo, but we didn’t manage to finish it! The year after we sent some music with Geir Jenssen, who went down to see Renaat (R&S Records owner) in Belgium. Renaat released it on Apollo Records in early 1994.

Were you involved with Brygga Radio? I did a couple of shows when I was visited Bjørn Torske as he had his own show on Brygga Radio. I listened to it all the time and it really meant a lot to me, we had nine hours of techno music every week. It was a local radio station without any strict rules on what was being played. Bjørn and Geir had the opportunity to play whatever they liked, and Bjorn had a lot of records! Geir Jenssen had a mail-order set up getting all the new things from Detroit and Europe, so I guess we were kind of lucky to have that station. It was a station for the younger generation of Tromsø and these programmes were for just 20 or 30 people; there weren’t many more people listening to it.

Doc L Junior, Bjørn Torske & Mental Overdrive circa 1990

Doc L Junior, Bjørn Torske & Mental Overdrive circa 1990

Did you feel like you were rebelling against anything? Making music in those days was a kind of rebellion. I wouldn’t compare it to the punk because the punk scene was much angrier. This was more like using electronic equipment that we could get our hands-on and do whatever we wanted with it. That was the rebellion. Not using it as it was supposed to be used, but the way we wanted to use it. The local reaction was that we weren’t really making ‘real’ music. People thought that we just pressed some buttons and the music came out all by itself. I remember we played some concerts at our school and nobody really understood what we were doing, they thought it was just some noisy stuff that they didn’t really have to bother about.

Tell us about your band, Aedena Cycle along with Svein Berge, Gaute Barlindhaug and Torbjørn Brundtland. We started when we were 13, 14 or something and we bought a drum machine and sampler together. We didn’t have a sequencer at that time, so we played the instruments and recorded them onto tape. What was special about it was that we started making music immediately. I bought a sound card for my computer and we started using sequencers then it became more technical. What happened then was that we started making our music individually. We weren’t a band anymore. It split us up in a good way because we helped each other out; we evolved individually as artists.

How did Röyksopp begin? Röyksopp started out when Torbjørn moved to Bergen, he was joined by Svein and they started producing music, making some really good tracks. I remember listening to them and they were much better than anything I had heard for ages. It sounded like something new. They then met up with Mikal at Telle Records who pressed their first single and he actively encouraged them to go and send it out to other labels. Röyksopp were unique in that they used samples in a totally different and very creative way. Everything was processed in a very precise and complicated way. It was technically advanced compared to other productions at the time. Plus, the music is brilliant, they were compositions rather than just samples over the top of beats. That was new in this genre of music.

Were you aware of the Bergen Wave music phenomenon? I was in Bergen a lot during the mid-nineties and I was in the middle of the Bergen Wave. I met Erlend (Ralph Myerz) at the time and we produced some music together. I did some work with Bjørn, Torbjørn and Svein in their studio. For me it was just something that evolved, it just happened organically as certain people met each other. Of course, Tore (Erot) made some brilliant music, also something very new at that time in Europe, his tracks sounded much more American

What’s your favourite Norwegian record? Biosphere with ‘Substrata’.

Favourite Norwegian producer? Biosphere.

What’s your favourite Norwegian club? Café Opera in Bergen because it was one of the first clubs where I could play my own music in Norway. Café Opera was a venue where you could play American, vocal, house, garage and more soulful tracks. It was the first place that it was beneficial to make this kind of music. It was an open-minded crowd, interested in all aspects of electronic music.

You were playing American house, were you the only one playing it at the time? I started playing US house tracks early on and I was pretty much the only one for a while. People played the ‘harder’ Chicago sound, but I played the Frankie Knuckles and Masters at Work productions from the early nineties. Bjørn Torske and Strangefruit started playing a lot of new tunes but they preferred the harder style. I loved the old soulful and soft, American electronic music, but I do like Detroit techno!

These excerpts were recorded and transcribed with some parts of the interview being used in the final print of the Northern Disco Lights feature documentary film.

© Paper Vision Ltd (Pete Jenkinson/Ben Davis)

Recorded on a Zoom H2.

Transcribed by Fingertips, Louie Callegari and Tongue Tied.

Memoirs from Norway’s underground dance pioneers: Vidar Hanssen #4

Travelling around Norway in the Spring is a fantastic experience. During my trip in 2013, we hooked up with the key movers and shakers involved in forming the country’s house and disco scenes. I was lucky enough to touch down in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø, and many weird and beautiful places in the surrounding areas. I travelled with Ben Davis, who was directing the film we were working on, formed from interviews with the key people from the dance scene plus Paper Recording’s label artists such as Those Norwegians. We were also curious about the country, geography, and people and how they influenced each other’s creative passions. This film had a working title of ‘Northern Disco Lights – The Rise and Rise of Norwegian House Music’. During our visit, we spoke to as many of the DJs, producers, promoters and radio stations as we could and decided to publish these best bits that sum up the trip, the film and our findings.

Vidar Hanssen was, and still is a key stakeholder in the creative industries of Tromsø, Norway since 1989. He runs the Beatservice record label which has just passed its 200th release from mostly Tromsø based producers and artists.

Hi Vidar, A lot of artists and producers from Tromsø seem to have a mischievous sense of humour which is apparent in the music, for example, Röyksopp, Bjørn Torske, Rune Lindbæk, why do you think that is? The first generation of Tromsø artists was more mysterious and into techno using English track titles; the second generation including Ole Johan Mjøs, Bjørn Torske, Rune Lindbæk were all close friends who like having a laugh. Before they started making records, they played gigs in town all the time. Bjørn Torske (Ismistik) and Drum Island showed a lot of their sense of humour with the strange track titles and they used this humour in their records. I think the Oslo scene was also influenced, I saw a Full Pupp (label) compilation, and some of the track titles were very strange, Norwegian sounding track titles. I think this makes it interesting for the international audience abroad when they have these titles and they don’t know what it’s all about because it’s Norwegian and they don’t understand it, but the tracks are cool. The difference between growing up in Tromsø and Oslo was that they had record shops, venues and the national media was based there but in Tromsø, we didn’t have that focus on the Norwegian scene, so we just travelled directly abroad.

How did you all meet? There was only one high school or college (three years from 16 to 18) called Kongsbakken where Kolbjørn Lyslo, Gaute Barlindhaug, Torbjørn and Svein Berge, Bjørn Torske went but after me. However, Per, Geir, Rune, Bjørn and I all went to the same primary school. We were from working-class families, none of our parents was in the creative or performance industries.

When did you first hear about Bjørn Torske? Bjørn Torske was one of the people I knew that was listening to my radio show because he had been in contact and bought some of the records. When we were ordering stuff from England, sometimes you would order two copies and forget you already had an extra one so he got some of those records from me. I knew Bjørn before he was started to make music as also DJed on Brygga Radio along with Rune Lindbæk, so I knew him from those days. I started following him when he made his more techno music under the Ismistik alias.

Vidar Hanssen's Vinyl Collection

What was Brygga Radio like? We had four or five local radio stations in Tromsø, and Brygga Radio was for the more alternative, anarchic styles of music. A lot of guys had shows on Brygga from the first wave of Tromsø music producers like Per Martinsen and then from the second wave with people such as Rune Lindbæk.

How did the Norwegian disco compilations come about?
In the beginning, there was a lot of techno from the Tromsø artists, then we had this period where there was some techno but also some electronic and breakbeat stuff. As we approached the year 2000, people were starting to release a lot of house music from international labels, some on their own labels and some one-off stuff that they made themselves. Also, in this period we had a very small, tiny club in Tromsø called Yazz’n which was the start of the club scene that you now see in Tromsø. The club nights mostly played funk and house music. I DJed there a few times and the first Beatservice compilation, ‘Prima Norsk’ was my DJ set at the time. My thoughts were that the music was very cool and needed to reach a larger audience.

Do you think disco has had an influence on Norwegian dance music? When you DJ with house music those records have disco elements, but the pure disco scene is more of an Oslo thing. You have Bjørn Torske who has done some cool disco stuff. There are not many disco artists in Tromsø. When Bjørn made his disco records he was living in Bergen.

Did the ‘Bergen Wave’ make a difference to your record label Beatservice with the increasing international attention focused on Norwegian music?
Beatservice has always been an underground label and the successes have been more by accident than design. For example, the first Xploding Plastix album has been the label’s best-selling album and my biggest success has come with a pop style, a guitar-driven band called Flunk.

Vidar Hanssen making his Beatservice Radio

Vidar Hanssen making his Beatservice Radio

Do you think Norwegian electronic music has certain characteristics?
I think it’s spacy and has a bit of playfulness. You have a lot of sub-genres here, there are also some very good drum and bass players in Norway. Now you have a new generation of electronic artists, Cashmere Cat, for example, he is a very young guy with a lot of musical skills.

What’s your favourite Norwegian club ever?
My favourite club must be the original Yazz’n because it was so intimate and small, it’s legendary but nowadays I really like two clubs in Tromsø called Circa and Verte (VT – Verdensteatret). In Oslo, I have had some memorable evenings at Blå.

Who is your favourite Norwegian producer?
It is very difficult to pick one Norwegian producer. It switches from time to time. Nowadays, I like Lindstrøm very much. I have a complete Lindstrom compilation on my car stereo. I like everything he has done, but also Vidar HanssenGeir Jenssen’s Biosphere is classic.

What is your favourite ever Norwegian track?
My favourite Norwegian tracks are ‘I Feel Space’ by Lindstrøm, ‘Novelty Waves’ by Biosphere and ‘Jeg Vil Være Søppelmann’ by Bjørn Torske.

These excerpts were recorded and transcribed with some parts of the interview being used in the final print of the Northern Disco Lights feature documentary film.

© Paper Vision Ltd (Pete Jenkinson/Ben Davis)

Recorded on a Zoom H2.

Transcribed by Fingertips, Louie Callegari and Tongue Tied.