Spaceship Pirate
Scandinavia's rising cosmic-disco star, Todd Terje is on a mission; to record his own album before quantum science sucks him back into its orbit.
By Paris Pompor
The motion of physics, the science of sound
Todd Terje's cheeky (and somewhat illegal) bootlegs of everyone from
Michael Jackson to Demis Roussos, continue thrilling clubbers.
"I
don't really know much about Australia," admits Terje on the eve of his
first DJ tour here. "I know it's quite south, so of course there's
probably more sun than Norway."
It was in Norway that Terje
began playing piano at age seven. The plan was to study jazz and to
this end he enrolled at an Oslo university, but dissatisfaction with
the course led to an unexpected change in his career flight path.
Ditching piano studies, Terje took up physics. That's quite a leap,
considering he didn't complete high school mathematics! Around the same
time, Terje also began DJing.
"The first semester [of]
physics at university was really, really tough. I got very fascinated
with physics... It was quite fun to study it, but it doesn't really have
much to do with music."
Eventually his DJ bookings took over, necessitating a study break.
"I'm
still on the break," laughs Terje. "Right now it's so much fun to do
music, and I'm not going to go back until I at least make an album."
Terje's
debut is still at the drawing board stage, yet he's made a name
worldwide with a string of remixes and re-edits. Along with fellow
Norwegians Peter-Hans Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas, Terje is one of the
leading lights in a genre alternately termed cosmic, space, or
astro-disco.
Terje sniggers when I mention reports his cosmic
sound is a result of sitting through lectures on subatomic particles
and energy quantization.
"I think journalists love to say ‘Oh
he's an astrophysics student, that's the reason he's making
space-disco, astro-disco.' I really can't say I was very inspired by
black holes!"
Terje's disco edits were inspired by a desire
to play funky 70s and 80s records during DJ sets. Often recorded before
drum machines, their fluctuating tempos and live instruments didn't
always stack up against the latest electronic house music tracks, whose
thumping kick drums, machined rhythms and up-to-the-minute production
techniques had the same effect as solar flares after soft moonlight. To
overcome the difficulty of mixing in an early track by Chaka Khan, KC
& The Sunshine Band or Curtis Mayfield, Terje began re-editing them
for his own use. Soon, labels specialising in bootleg vinyl began
releasing his mixes and other DJs began playing them.
Many of
those tracks were reintroduced to clubs were originally recorded before
Terje, 26, was born. "When I first heard disco, my sister had brought
home some records and I thought: 'You're being ironic, right? You're
joking, yes? You don't really like this, do you?' And she did! "
Escaping
his tiny hometown, Terje soon found himself on his sister's trajectory.
Little did he know there were other space cadets out there.
"At
one of my first DJ gigs in Oslo at a student pub, I met DJ Lindstrøm.
It was also one of his first DJ gigs, so we were both in the same
trouble! We both thought we were the only ones in the world who really
liked disco."
Todd Terje hits the decks at Civic Underground, Corner of Pitt & Goulburn Sts, Sydney, ?on Sat 26 April. 10pm, $22.80