Introducing... Of Norway

In what will be the UK live debut for this Norweigan duo, Vegard Wolf Dyvik and Christian Steenstrup will be bringing their Scandinavian space disco to the Room One stage this Saturday in celebration of the 10 year anniversary of Darkroom Dubs alongside label heads, Silicone Soul. Seeing as it’s the first time they’ve played live in the UK let alone in Farringdon, we thought it fitting to get to know them better right here on our web space and introduce them to you properly, alongside a recording (albeit one from 12 months ago) of their previous live outpourings. A little insight into what we can expect this Saturday night from Of Norway. For those of our readers who may not be so familiar with you please can you introduce yourselves? Hello! We are a production and DJ duo living in Oslo, Norway. Our names are Vegard Wolf Dyvik and Christian Steenstrup. We have been producing together since 2006 but before that Vegard released a bunch of stuff on labels like Brique Rouge and Rebirth. Vegard also has a solo career with more disco flavoured productions on labels such as Rong Music and Afro Art as well as production credits for disco diva Billie Ray Martin. Christian used to play in bands. We both like animals. Vegard likes cats and Christian likes dogs. As Of Norway we have been lucky enough to play around Europe at places like Bar 25 (Berlin), Propaganda (Moscow), Pfingstweide (Zurich), Razzmatazz (Barcelona), Berns (Stockholm), the great FUSION FESTIVAL (Germany), Katerholzig (Berlin) and the mighty Tresor (Berlin). We have released music on labels such as Connaisseur Recordings, Afro Art, Darkroom Dubs, My Favourite Robot, Soma, Rebirth and Hope to name a few. Being from Norway can you tell us what’s going on there for music right now? Norway has for a long time been one of the spearheading territories for “new disco” with names such as Todd Terje, Lindstrom, Prins Thomas, Rune Lindbaek, Diskjokke, Magnus International, Skatebaard and so on. The past years a lot of amazing stuff has come from the Ost & Kjex guys as well as big hits from Finnebassen. It’s a small but healthy scene. Everyone knows each other. Who were your biggest musical influences? This is always a hard one two answer! We both like a wide variety of music, but I think the only bands we both can agree on are Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd and Italo Disco as a genre. Haha! It’s not really reflected that much in our music, but is there in spirit! How did you then begin making tracks and DJing? Vegard started producing when he was 12 on a C64 and later on an Amiga 500. He was a bit of a hot shot on the demo scene back in the 90’s. We started producing together back in 2006 when we were asked to do a remix for a band Christian knew. He said OK without actually having any equipment to produce said remix. He then contacted Vegard with a 48 hr deadline and the partnership was formed. We both started DJing while studying in the UK in 1997. Christian was playing Drum n Bass, Electro funk and Hip Hop and Vegard was playing house. How would you describe your sound? Can you highlight a few tracks from your back catalogue that you think show your sound best? We would rather not attempt to describe our sound as we would most certainly not get it right, but if twist our arm these tracks and remixes get pretty close... What’re your big and breaking plans for the coming year? 2014 is going to be great! We are releasing a live album on Darkroom Dubs and a studio album on Connaisseur Recordings. We also have a remix we did for Uner coming up soon on Audiofly’s label Maison D’Être. You’ll be playing live in Room Two, can you tell us a bit about your live set? We can’t wait! Really looking forward to finally play in the UK. It will be our first time doing a live set there. Our live set is based around 2 laptops running Ableton live. We've extracted our tracks and beefed them up some to fit a dancefloor better. We also use Maschine to play and record percussion loops, small melodic stuff and so on. And we use a bunch of guitar stomp boxes to effect things, also to take away some of the quantization and make it a bit more human. We have had some very good gigs this year and hope that fabric will like us too! The crowd is half the party, so let's do this together! See you soon!