Telephones
can be assined to the so called second generation of Norwegian producers/DJs wading in the waters of Nu Disco/Italo/Slow Motion House. Coming from the rich music scene in Bergen, Telephones influences are obviously Erot and Bjorn Torske. He released on Prins Thomas' Full Pupp imprint, tours Europe with his exciting live act and DJs on a tight schedule.
I was born in 1982 and this is the track I remember best from my childhood. It's a kind of an odd Norwegian disco-track about rollerskates. My favourite hobby was to lay naked in the sakkosekk with headphones and listen to this track.
One of my favourite bands, but a pretty un-typical track. If you want to stay awake for 24 hours you need to go slow and steady, just like this song.
Just stumbled across this some years ago after being in China. It's a totally magical mixture of krautrock, noise and post-something. Topped with some beautiful spaced-out asian flavours and pling-plong instruments I can never pronounce the names of.
Ever since a friend from Oslo was a guest on my college radio show in Trondheim in 2003, playing this track, I have been hooked. It also suggests that a lot of cute girls would be around the pool drinking pina colada, plus some tiny europan mountain-people wearing funny hats with feathers. All good.
Great also with the acoustics of a bathroom.
This track was on my favourite part in the first skateboard film I ever got. I have probably seen it 300 times, and this song just makes me feel totally immortal and a bit wasted. Perfect for going fast, wether that be on a bike in crazy Neukolln-traffic or in a skatepark with some cold beers on a hot summer day.
One of my favourite romantic songs from Bergen.
Get on the disco train! This track encompasses so much of this nice vibey mystique and excitement one can sometimes feel going to a new club or to something special. It's funky and organic, but also kind of dark and mysterious. It's a little bit proto-techno, and I love all things proto.
Strange Hawaiian album I found on the fleamarket in Norway once. It even has this funny description on the sleeve how to listen to this music the best.
Not too depressing and it doen't make you even more depressed. It kinda nutures you in the state that you're in.
One of my current neighbours just smashed her front door, plus one more inside, screaming and going ballistic for one hour. The other neighbour just got his door crowbarred and drilled open by the police. So I don't pretty much feel like disturbing them at all.
The track I was working on for the last 8 hours. I like to work late at night. But then sometimes it's also better to loose yourself up and listen to something else. «Dream Baby Dream» is like this lullaby for grown ups.
One of my favourite Norwegian bands. I got into them around winter 2008 because they were friends of my girlfriend at the time. Then she moved to the other side of the world and I was devastaded. Then I thought at least I can do a lot of music with all this extra time, but my computer and 5 years of work crashed and got lost. Then I thought at least I can skate a lot, but the only indoor skatepark in the city was closed for the winter. So this got kind of like the soundtrack to broken hearts with too much time on your hands. It's not particulary sad, but there's definitely some melancholy to it.
I guess you have to be a bit crazy to go parachuting. And this song is a little crazy. And it's also very fast in a way. Such a great track. Would be my choice for jumping both with and without a parachute!
Off the «Life Aquatic» OST. It's a fast and not so serious song. Just like the state you have to be in when you're playing ping pong.
I don't like saunas because I have this annoying sensitivity to temperatures. The title of this song clearly states the fact that makes me freak out - if you're naked and too hot, there's really nothing you can do. If you're too cold, you can put on clothes. Or if you're too hot in the cold you can undress. Maybe it's because I'm Norwegian I prefer to be in a cold environement, prior to a too hot one. Althoug I'm from Bergen, the issue would most likely rather be about being too wet or too dry. In that case I'm not really sure what I'd prefer. Maybe wet. It can be pretty refreshing, if you really have to put your mind to it.
The chords just climb higher and higher here, and when finally the main synth melody comes in it just feels like you're having wind through your hair and looking down 300m. And there's somehting about that arpeggio in the background resembling the feeling of looking at tiny ant people walking around in this deep abyss below you.
It would certainly fit the atmosphere. It's a little dark and scary, but also immensly cool. A track that makes one want to wander off in dark hotel corridors, not really wanting to turn around the next corner, but there's still this uncontrollable drive just pushing you forward. Grabbing you and making you open that suspicious little door that maybe is closed for very good reasons.
Although for me this is actually more of a train song, as there are no subways in the west-coast of Norway. But in 1998 when I went to a music gymnasium some hours outside of Bergen I was listening to his «Nedi Myra» album non-stop on the local train, this being one of my favourite tracks. It was accidentally on the B-side of a cassette I borrowed from a girl for some school project. It was my first meeting with this kind of discoid house music, totally unexpected and mysterious. It had a huge impact on me.
Fortunately I never had to repait one. But if I had to I would probably repair it not perefectly so it will sound a bit like the ones used by The Units.
Not because they're called «The Wake» but because it's an uplifting song that starts your day perfectly.
A thing I did a lot coming from Bergen, the rain capitol of Scandinavia. This tune sounds really wet, like a soaked trench-coat smelling from cigarettes and cool future-noir melancholy.
