The so-called Bergen Wave of Norwegian techno might have gained currency outside of its homeland during the 1990s but it was often to the irritation of musicians from Tromsø, far to the north. Like the Merseybeat, the Philly Sound or Detroit techno, the Bergen Wave became a handy media term that tended to suck everything into its orbit irrespective of accuracy.
Musicians Bjørn Torske, Per Martinsen (aka Mental Overdrive), Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland (of Aedena Cycle and later Röyksopp) were some of the clan that gravitated 750 miles south to the “capital of the fjords”, but just as The Wurzels relocating to Chorlton wouldn’t make them baggy, so the Tromsonians felt weirdly misrepresented being geographically pegged to an adopted city by journalists working just off the Shaftesbury Avenue who’d quite possibly never stepped foot in Scandinavia.
The country’s love affair with techno began up in the Arctic Circle with one man: Tromsø resident Geir Jenssen, better known as Biosphere. Jenssen made waves of his own as part of Bel Canto in the mid-80s on Marc Hollander’s Crammed Discs label, and it was on the Crammed dance subsidiary SSR that he started making Detroit-inspired beats under the sobriquet Bleep. His underground success coupled with A-ha’s remarkable overground success inspired a generation growing up in the same fishing community to explore ways that they too might become superstar DJs or international popstars.
In the 2016 documentary Northern Disco Lights, a film about the rise of dance music in Norway, Bjørn Torske remembers walking past Jenssen’s house and saying excitedly to himself: “There are synthesisers in there!”; while when I interviewed Röyksopp in Oslo for Electronic Sound in 2022, the duo spoke misty-eyed about knocking on Jenssen’s door as kids and presenting him with a DAT tape of their music, and he being generous enough to take them under his wing.
Tromsø has been referred to as “the Detroit of the north”, though it’s a land more famous for snowmobiles than motorcars. Moreover, the scene was so DIY and localised that Torske and Martinsen built stroboscopes and did their own stage decor for Tromsø’s first ever rave, held in a church hall they hired themselves. Like most small towns, there are few options available to alleviate boredom – either take up hard drugs or develop a hobby and hyperfocus. That sense of ennui offers a strange kind of advantage over more bourgeois and happening hubs like Oslo and Bergen.
These friends were also involved in pirate radio – a way to disseminate their music and the music of others, with local characters like DJ Strangefruit picking up plenty of rare grooves whilst digging abroad, and Bjørn Torske would make a yearly pilgrimage to London to pick up 12”s. Therefore the sounds of everywhere from Berlin to Birmingham via Detroit fed into the early Tromsø techno, and what comes out feels somehow less urban and more in tune with the inhospitable environment of the Arctic Circle, with echo and tape delay and field recordings of the surroundings often baked into the tracks, bringing a tacit sense of survival into the music too. The influence of the wilderness as a feature of the music, starting with Biosphere, has been influential on artists from Erland Cooper to Vladislav Delay, whether they realise it or not.
Tromsø’s lack of proximity to anywhere important – in a cultural sense – means that there are no torn allegiances or dues to pay. Norway’s dance music evolved unimpeded, with artists throwing in bright synths and off-kilter bass grooves, wearing their influences lightly and taking indiscriminately from around the globe. Tromsø techno itself can be a misnomer, especially when house is brought into the equation, or latterly, cosmic disco, with artists like Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas and Todd Terje taking their disco to the moon, building upon what started with the maverick DJ’s maverick DJ Bjørn Torske.
Bleep – ‘A Byte of AMC’ (1990)
Bleep aka Geir Jenssen started splicing records together as was the wont of the experimental Belgian label he was signed to, SSR – short for Sampler et Sans Reproche (a play on “sans peur et sans reproche” or “without fear or reproach”.) ‘A Byte of AMC’ is certainly of its time, taking in the prevailing sounds of Detroit, though the samples themselves are interesting. The female ‘American’ rappers spitting about the harsh realities of living on the west side are actually Manchester rap outfit Kiss AMC lifted from their track ‘A Bit of U2’, while there’s another sample from Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz’s classic Azax Attra which came out on Crammed Disc’s Made To Measure series in the mid-80s and sought to blend Persian tradition with the New York avant-garde with the help of a Fairlight CMI. There are samples of samples of samples then, with the distorted facsimiles giving only the tiniest of glimmer as to where Jenssen would go next.
Mental Overdrive – ‘Communion’ (1991)
Per Martinsen brought back dance influences from a lively Hackney squat that he’d taken up residence in during the late 1980s, which may have some bearing on why ‘Communion’ sounds like it was recorded in a dustbin. Taken from Mental Overdrive’s 12” EP, ‘The Second Coming’, it features the greatest undisclosed sample of an ascending, foreboding cello in the history of sampled cellos. Martinsen found himself on a Belgian label too, in the shape of R & S Records, which was also putting out a fairly hardcore version of Moby’s ‘Go’ at the time.
Biosphere – ‘Novelty Waves’ (1995)
These days, Biosphere is all about the ambient, as demonstrated on his latest low key vintage synth offering Inland Deltafrom November 2023, though 1994’s Patashnik heralded a golden period where he stripped back the excesses of Bleep and brought in the atmospherics. ‘Novelty Waves’ best exemplifies that approach, and it became a crossover dance floor hit at the time, before the distillation process properly kicked in. When I spoke to Steve Davis for an interview last year, he told me he was listening to a lot of Biosphere. The Davis stamp of approval is a coveted accolade, and usually means something is out of reach and worth persisting with once located, which is certainly true of Biosphere.
Bjørn Torske – ‘Station to Station’ (1998)
I considered opting for ‘In Disco’ by The Torske / Mundal Explosion, the first record on Tellé as a double a-side with Erot’s ‘Song For Annie’ on the flipside, and while that record is foundational and each side tells its own story, I went with ‘Station to Station’ in the end because it’s such an interesting track. Firstly, it’s not got anything to do with the David Bowie song of the same name, but instead takes the locomotive theme and builds the whole track on that sense of motion, though if it’s a train then the pistons and rods all appear to be held together with elastic bands. Naturally it’s built for the dance floor, but it’s in the headphones where the subtle symbiosis of the parts reveal themselves, and an enigmatic piece starts to become an addictive one.
Rune Lindbæk – ‘Ok, Kjør Romskip’ (2001)
Rune Lindbæk is not as well known as some of his Tromsonian counterparts, though ‘Ok, Kjør Romskip’ is demonstrative of the direction of travel for Norwegian dance music at the turn of the century. There’s a touch of American funk at its core, and it could even be described as proto-Scandalearic if you squint. It’d be a stretch to call it techno but it’s certainly a banger, with a scything synth solo to send you on your way. Stick this in your cans, it’s as cosmic as the Aurora Borealis itself.
