Organic Intelligence XXXIV: Tromsø Techno

In this month’s antidote to the algorithm, Jeremy Allen takes us up to the far north of Norway and the emergence of the country’s techno scene

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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.