RA.466 Bjørn Torske

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It’s interesting to consider the ways in which different countries have consumed and interpreted house and techno since it sprang from the US all those years ago. It’s a generalisation, sure, but Norwegian producers are often associated with a particularly distinct take on those styles. Tromsø’s Bjørn Torske is the largely responsible for this fact. He started releasing music in the ’90s, and developed a sound that draws as much from disco, dub and psychedelic rock as it does house and techno. He’s released four albums since 1998—two of which, the excellent Nedi Myra and Trøbbel, were recently reissued by Smalltown Supersound—and has worked with key labels like Tellé, Svek and Sex Tags Mania. This has made him a cult favourite in Norway, and an enormous inspiration to guys like Todd Terje, Prins Thomas and Lindstrøm, artists who would go on to spread variations of the Norwegian style around the world. (“Nedi Myra was one of the first house albums I bought, or at least that’s what I thought it was,” Terje said recently. “Weird futuro-bossa and foggy disco-not-really-disco was more like it.”) Torske himself has been more of a low-key presence over the years, but he’s kept up a steady flow of releases and DJs regularly in and around Norway—”my highest priority definitely is to be a DJ and select music for people,” he says below.