The New Norwegian Scene

When one's thoughts drift toward Norway's frigid, jagged Atlantic coastline, carved with fjords, harsh inlets and dizzying cliffs, dominated by the grand and overwhelming spectacle of nature's creative force, where even imagination proves inadequate to grasp the majestic complexity of it all, the mind inevitably drifts back to the melancholic, sublime, radiant melodies of the "Peer Gynt" suite by that true son of Bergen, Edvard Grieg. A century after the death of Norway's most celebrated composer, it seems those enchanting landscapes surrounding the hometown of both him and Ole Bull – often regarded as one of the finest Romantic violinists – have never stopped inspiring generations of musicians. And so, between the late Nineties and the start of the decade that has just ended, a small city of a few hundred thousand inhabitants became one of Europe's alt-pop capitals.

In the early Nineties, especially for those who knew little or nothing of Bergen, the city loomed in the imagination as a dark place, hidden behind seven jagged hills, blanketed by clouds bearing endless rain: the wicked capital of Varg Vikernes and the most brutal figures of the "Black Metal Mafia," purveyors of hatred and violence through nihilistic, Luciferian musical schemes, home to a people whose dialect is used to dub the villains in Norwegian cartoons, a people who reject their own national identity because, as the banners of the local football team read, Bærgen er ikkje Norge. But, as we know, music is capable of transfiguring – in just a few bars, with just a handful of sounds and atmospheres – images that seemed by then firmly rooted in our collective consciousness.

And so, when in the spring of 2004 Italian radio and television began playing a strikingly evocative song by two young men from Bergen, "Misread," the city was suddenly given back its dreamlike, enchanted aura. Yet between the mid-Nineties and the middle of the decade just ended, there's a whole story to tell, one whose gripping sequel continues right up to the period since that 2004 moment.

It's a simple story, seemingly easy enough to understand: kids escaping the cold, the rain, but above all the boredom and loneliness, gathering in flats and pubs, sipping dubious spirits and nibbling on frozen pizzas of questionable quality. One of them is Mikal Telle, an eighteen-year-old from Oslo whose name might mean little to most people, but who is instead everything (or nearly everything) to the fortunes of what came to be known as the Bergen Wave, or bergensbølgen.

Sensing no small amount of creative potential brewing among the city's young musicians, in September 1995 Telle decided to open a shop on one of downtown Bergen's most distinctive streets, at number 11 Skostredet, where he could peddle colorful capsules of underground culture. It would go on to become a meeting point not just for kids from Bergen but from other Norwegian cities too, all flocking to the charming town brimming with artistic ambition. Initially called Primitive Records and focused more specifically on punk productions, in order to better catalogue its other souls – the pop side and the electro side – the House of Tellé would also adopt the names Ellet and Footnes/Tellektro. The label's main purpose was to put out 7", 10" and 12" releases to be distributed around the country. Its first release was a split single by Bjørn Torske, the elder statesman of Norwegian space-techno (and the man chiefly responsible for the Scandinavian italo-disco wave that would carry Bergen's own Skatebård to DFA and Lindstrøm to worldwide acclaim), and Dj Erot, real name Tore Kroknes. Kroknes, who tragically passed away in 2001, played a decisive role in the artistic breakthrough of his then-partner Annie in 1999, when her debut single "The Greatest Hit" came out, at a time when the young electropop singer had just arrived in Bergen and was working as a DJ in local clubs. Around those same crews, two old friends from Tromsø, Stein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland, had recently reunited, and under the name Röyksopp they released two singles for Tellé – "Eple" and "So Easy" – trip/downbeat gems so accomplished that Britain's Wall of Sound signed them in record time.

The release of "Melody A.M." marked a turning point in the evolution and internationalization of the new Bergen scene. Telle's workshop became a talent pool feeding artists to major British and American record companies, and within a couple of years Kings Of Convenience, led by Erlend Øye – one of the most devoted regulars of the House of Tellé – received, after American distribution of a self-titled EP through the small Kindercore label and a debut album on Astralwerks, a decisive commercial boost from EMI, which handled the singles from their second album, "Riot On An Empty Street," allowing the Bergen duo to climb charts worldwide, even reaching No. 3 in Italy; 2004 was also the year of the official debut (on a Warner sub-label, London's Sixsevenine) of Annie with "Anniemal," a collection of icy bubblegum-pop sketches that immediately won over critics worldwide (with glowing reviews from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Uncut, Allmusic and Slant); the following year would bring the crowning moment – helped along by shrewd marketing moves like an appearance in the first iPod's ad campaigns, plus distinctive poses and irreverent, self-mocking antics – for the digital-twisted-punk duo Datarock.

The picture sketched out so far helps reconstruct the attitude underpinning the House of Tellé: a DIY romanticism coexisting with a clear rejection of "making records" purely for profit. Confirming this is the fact that even the international success of artists tied to the label couldn't prevent it from shutting down between 2004 and 2007.

In those years, however, Bergen was hardly resting on the still-green laurels of its recent past. This same period also saw the rise of the bergensbølgen's other great talent scout: Hans-Petter Gundersen. HP, as he's better known locally, after some negligible musical experiences dating back to the late Eighties, became a trusted figure for the Norwegian arms of Warner, EMI, Sony Music and Virgin. It was he who, in 2001, discovered the talents of a fresh-faced, innocent-looking seventeen-year-old. That young man was Sondre Lerche, who between 2001 and 2004 released an album and a string of promos and singles for Virgin Norway overflowing with striking melodicism and an unusually refined ear for arrangement. "Two-Way Monologue," from 2004, is perhaps the high-water mark of Bergen pop. In the States, where he currently lives, young Lerche has been given the flattering (and probably misplaced) label of "the new Bacharach" thanks to the sophistication with which the singer-songwriter blends elements of 1950s American pop, música popular brasileira, the swing jazz his guitar teacher instilled in him, and certain strands of 80s English pop à la Prefab Sprout or à la Elvis Costello. And yet, despite so many outside influences, "Two Way Monologue" sounds like a Bergen record through and through. Listening to it, it's impossible not to detect the imprint of Lerche's surroundings: gems like "Wet Ground," "Days That Are Over," "Track You Down," "Stupid Memory," "Maybe You're Gone" and the title track "Two Way Monologue" itself seem to speak of the city, of its purple winter-morning skies, of its pastel-colored houses lining still waters, of its perpetually damp cobbled streets.

HP Gundersen's discoveries, however, don't end with Sondre Lerche. Alongside less compelling projects – such as a compilation of supposed next-big-things from the bergensbølgen titled "Rørt ug Urørt," featuring a string of hardly unforgettable artists like Sergeant Petter, Magnet, Thomas Dybdahl, Animal Alpha and Nathalie Nordnes – Gundersen also deserves credit for unearthing two other talented young artists: Julian Berntzen and Matias Tellez. The former makes crooked but elegant chamber pop clearly indebted to Sagittarius/Zombies/Love, and while his first two records are pleasant enough, marked by a compositional immaturity that's a bit too obvious, it's above all "Rocket Ship Love" that stands out, with Berntzen playing the part of a Scandinavian Neil Hannon. Tellez, meanwhile, the son of Chilean political refugees, is a singer-songwriter who turns the influence of his Latin roots into his greatest strength: "Tamias Mellez," released in 2007, is an explosive mix of funk, bossa nova and garage-tropicália in the vein of Os Mutantes", so irresistible that it even conquered Japan, now the main market for Tellez, who at just twenty-one already has three albums under his belt and a deal with Sony.

2007 was also the year the House of Tellé reopened its doors. Telle didn't simply relaunch the local scene, but also focused on imported acts: the first was Familjen, from Scania, purveyors of super-catchy techno-pop built on sturdy beats and icy synths. "Det snurrar i min skalle," sung entirely in a Swedish dialect, is a collection of little electro sticks of dynamite that instantly went off on Europe's underground dancefloors. The following year, Tellé released "Explode From The Center" by the Rubies, a California act with a distinctly Scandinavian bent thanks to its clear debts to Concretes, Knife, Robyn, Lykke Li and Röyksopp.

Today the city's music scene is thriving: according to some trade press, the era of the "New Bergen Wave" may already be underway, as though the recent creative contributions of emerging bands – like Casiokids, all-out synth-poppers behind the excellent "Topp stemning på lokal bar"; Ungdomskulen, a smoked-salmon-pink garage-prog trio; Syntax TerrOrkester, jazz musicians grappling with Pavement; the Sounds Gold roster (Kakkmaddafakka, Megaphonic Thrift, Hypertext and Catastrophe); Razika, the illegitimate daughter of pick-any-one of the Slits; New Wine, Norway's answer to the flimsy British fluff coming out of Kitsuné – carried enough weight to constitute a whole new chapter in the history of Nordic pop.

Leaving to the future any verdict on that claim, what does emerge from this music scene – and is, in the end, the very reason for discussing it at all – is the distinctiveness of what it has to offer compared to the rest of Norway. Looking through the catalogue of Norway's most important alternative label, Rune Grammofon, one immediately notices the near-total absence of artists from Bergen. Oslo, Trondheim, Tromsø and Stavanger, by contrast, are all amply represented. And only then does it become clear how great artists as different from one another as The White Birch, Deathprod, Motorpsycho, Serena Maneesh, Supersilent, Alog or Biosphere could never sound like Bergen artists. Perhaps because of the bleak, claustrophobic atmospheres they conjure, or their ability to translate into music all the weaknesses and frustrations that a life of comfort can bring to the surface. Whereas in that small Atlantic coastal city, hidden behind its seven hills, tucked against crystal-clear fjords, despair turns into irony, discouragement into optimism and – as if by magic – dissonance turns into melancholic melody.

Mikal, during my months living in Bergen I found myself using the unfortunate term "Bergen Wave" more than once, but more often than not it was met with laughter, if not outright mockery... why is that?

I think it's a normal reaction... it took me ten years to come to terms with this dreadful journalistic label, which I've now grown used to, but I can't deny it still makes me chuckle whenever I hear or see it written down. When Kings of Convenience, Röyksopp and Annie all exploded at the same time, none of us realized that a bunch of friends who hung out at the same haunts were, at the same time, major phenomena – commercially too – on the European music scene. I kept seeing them, and still do, as people you'd bump into at a record shop, or at most as our ever-evolving local scene, but calling it a "wave"...

Did this local scene come into being before or after the founding of House of Telle? What was your role in its evolution?

The "local scene" definitely came first. My label's role was simply that of a "catalyst for ideas". I was utterly convinced of the quality of what we were putting out, which is why I decided to get involved, but honestly I never imagined those artists would achieve the success they actually did, perhaps because of the limited means at our disposal, which kept us confined to small, low-fidelity productions.

Do you mean that back in the mid-Nineties, when you founded Primitive Records, Bergen's music scene was already as rich in activity as it is now? It's hard for me to picture that – I imagine most people think of Bergen as a den of metalheads...

I opened the shop in 1995, the black metal wave was fading and we all had the sense of living through a transitional period. There was a great classic indie-rock scene, and above all it was in the electronic field that the most interesting things were happening. I'm not just talking about artists who never found much success outside the city limits, but also people like Bjørn Torske or Röyksopp, who back then were called Ædena Cycle and were just starting to make the rounds around here.

Do you think the artists of the Bergensbølgen, aside from where they're from, share any common traits – whether moods, or musical, stylistic or conceptual features – that tie them together?

I admit I really struggle to find a connecting thread between them, which is another reason I have such trouble digesting the term "wave", but I think that's a limitation on my part. Still, I try to step outside my own biases, shaped as they are by having lived in Bergen continuously. If I left the city for five or ten years and stopped listening to our music, when I came back I'd probably be able to find a common thread among our artists. I might well notice that our approach to life and music is fundamentally two-faced: there's a melancholic side, which musically corresponds to the "suspended" atmospheres of Röyksopp and Kings Of Convenience, and a sardonic-faced side, "punk" in our own particular way, which belongs to Datarock. The latter, for instance, I think embody the Bergen model well, thanks to their extraordinary knack for making fun of everything.

Music is also about "places". At the start of the piece I mentioned the extraordinary evocative power of Grieg's "Peer Gynt", which in the Western collective imagination conjures up Scandinavian landscapes. Do you think the environmental and social surroundings have had a certain influence on Bergen's musicians?

If you go to Oslo, or any other city in Norway, and compare their music to Bergen's, you notice a substantial difference between the two. It's as if elsewhere the tones were darker, as if you could feel a sense of frustration in the air. Here, despite that "melancholy" I mentioned earlier, there's a kind of optimistic spirit. A couple of years ago, Erlend Øye and I put out a compilation of tracks by young local artists, and we chose the title "Opplett", a word that's hard for me to translate but that roughly means something like "clear sky". That, too, is a sign of optimism, considering Bergen is probably the rainiest city in Europe.

But also the least cold in Norway...

Let's say also the warmest (at the time of the interview, Bergen was recording temperatures above 25°C, ed.). Going back to your point about environmental influence, I have no doubt it can shape our artists. Geographically, Bergen is a unique city: five minutes from downtown you can find yourself deep in the woods, on the shore of spectacular fjords, or atop jagged mountains. Almost all our artists love to retreat to those places, and their atmospheres inevitably become part of each artist's personal makeup... you see, once certain things settle inside you, it's almost impossible for them not to surface, even unconsciously, when it comes time to write.

I think the best season of our scene is the one that's about to arrive. In all these years, I've never seen so many top-level artists on the horizon at once. Lately there are some very young acts making the rounds who I'm sure will win people over and get talked about, like New Wine, for instance, who'll be releasing their debut album in a few months. Every so often I decide to quit the music business, close the shop and tell the label to go to hell... but then, right on cue, out of nowhere a bunch of really interesting artists show up. That's exactly what's happening now. Trust me, the future couldn't look brighter.

But the rise, at least locally, of artists like Fjorden Baby! and John Olav Nilsen, who sing in dialect, sounds at once like an assertion of identity and a closing of the door to international attention.

I don't think that's a limitation, and Familjen proved it. Our goal is still to produce quality work, regardless of any success it might find abroad. We always try to operate in a personal and transparent way, and we're well aware we're doing so, especially when dealing with England, which is our main point of reference outside our national borders.

Well, I can't answer that one!

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