Those Norwegians

Those Norwegians came out of the electronic scene that grew up in Tromsø, in the far north of Norway, in the early ‘90s. The original trio was Rune Lindbæk, Ole Johan Mjøs and Torbjørn Brundtland. Mjøs and Lindbæk had worked together in groups including Open Skies and Volcano, and Brundtland went on to form Röyksopp with Svein Berge.

They debuted in 1997 with the single “Da Kingue D’Mazda.” The album Kaminzky Park followed the same year on Manchester’s Paper Recordings, a label founded in 1993 by people working at the Hacienda and the Hard Times nights, which with Nuphonic, Glasgow Underground and 20/20 Vision became part of the late-’90s nu-disco wave. The title is a pun on Comiskey Park, the Chicago stadium where Disco Demolition Night happened in 1979, and the sleeve shows a burnt, warped 12-inch. The music inside is dance music full of disco, sample tricks and funky rhythms. The Kilpisjarvi EP and a handful of singles came after it, and the three also made an album together as Drum Island. When the original lineup split up, Lindbæk kept the name going with Gaute Drevdal.

On Red Melon, Those Norwegians released Toons, playful deep tech house with a pitched-down laugh motif and a late, acid-tinged lead over a bouncy, slightly muffled sub. Terry Lee Brown Jr. remixed it and added a shorter Terry’s Dub, both of which take it into hypnotic dub-house. The original also turns up on Dano’s Golden Gate Grooves mix for Slip ‘n’ Slide, next to records by Martin Solveig and François K.