"A man of many talents who has captured everyone’s attention"
Todd Terje is Norwegian producer, edit-maker and DJ, Terje Olsen. Terje arrived on the Scandinavian dance scene in 2004, soon becoming one of its prominent figures beside early supporters Prins Thomas and Hans-Peter Lindstrøm.
Terje channeled a voracious appetite for several styles of music — including dub, disco, synth pop, house, and techno — into warmly received edits of tracks by the Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and many more.
By 2006, it was difficult to keep tabs on all of Terje’s remix work, though the man’s looks at Lindstrøm’s “Another Station,” Studio’s “Life’s a Beach!,” Kaoru Inoue’s “The Secret Field,” and Dølle Jølle’s “Balearic Incarnation” weren’t easy to avoid in discerning DJ sets.
On Remaster of the Universe, released on 2010 through Permanent Vacation, Terje served up a collection of his edits and remixes in the form of a continuous DJ mix.
A year later, Gerd Janson’s Running Back label released Terje’s Ragysh – a 4 track EP of original cuts. The title track was an energetic thumper with a breakdown of epic proportions.
The other song on the EP that really turned heads was the hypnotic ‘Snooze 4 Love’ – both tracks were championed by DJs for all walks of life.
This was followed by 2012’s ‘It’s the Arps’ released on Smalltown Supersound, with the whole EP being composed on an ARP2600 – without a doubt one of the finest analog synthesizers ever.
Pitchfork wrote at the time “Terje has always been a sound– and not a retro– fetishist. Why else devote his precious remix work to nu-disco bench players and classic rock mammoths in equal measure? It’s no surprise then that he’d be tempted by a mystical artifact such as the Arp, which, like many old synthesizers, looks like the kind of rune-encrusted rock-toy that his music’s implied spaceships set out in search of.”
The standout track from the EP “Inspector Norse” would propel Terje to new heights. His profile was raised outside of the dance music world through his co-writing of Robbie Williams’ chart-topping single “Candy” in 2012 and his production of a couple songs on Franz Ferdinand’s 2013 album Right Thoughts Right Words Right Action. He also produced and mixed fellow Norwegian Lindstrøm’s 2012 album Smalhans, while prepping his long-overdue debut album.
“It’s Album Time” arrived in early 2014 on his own Olsen label.
The album was a huge hit and propelled Terje to new heights.
Pitch Fork’s review summed it up pretty nicely:
“It’s Album Time is, as advertised, disco producer Todd Terje’s first full-length album, and its title sets the tone: casual, confident, and unburdened by the imagined need for significance that scares so many good dance producers into losing their cool when given a bigger platform. Terje is a careful artist that’s fluent in history, an expert with texture, and possessing a grasp on composition more akin to a 1960s film composer than a contemporary dance producer.”
Terje formed backing band the Olsens, including members of Jaga Jazzist and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, in order to perform the songs live, the first performance being in Terje’s hometown Olso at the Oya Festival.
2016, Terje and the Olsens released The Big Cover-Up, which featured covers of tracks by Yellow Magic Orchestra, Boney M., and Vangelis, in addition to remixes by producers such as Prins Thomas and Daniel Maloso.