Erlend Øye
DJ Kicks: Erlend Øye

LA RECENSIONE

Erlend Øye, like all people with a bit of sense, despises labels.
The “nu-acoustic-movement” tag, given by the English press following the success with Kings Of Convenience, was rejected by him right away when, feeling too confined within that musical box made of arpeggios and sighing lyrics, he packed up to escape from the calm of Bergen.
He was fleeing the boredom of the Norwegian town but was also searching for a space more suited to his enormous love for electronic music. Berlin, his current home, seemed perfect: here digital music is now more at home than ever, here our Norwegian redhead could finally set aside the guise of the Nick Drake of the early millennium to settle in at the console.
The results were immediate, a remix album, collaborations, and above all his first solo album, “Unrest” born from singing over tracks created by some of the most interesting DJs of the moment.

At this point, enter !K7, the flagship label guiding almost all new electronic trends born in Europe at the end of the '90s, handing over the creation of yet another “Dj Kicks” compilation to Erlend Øye.
Øye plays house, minimal techno, electro-clash, proving himself to be an atypical DJ, certainly not among the most experienced, a factor that paradoxically stirs interest in the collection, free from being, as happened in the past with much more seasoned artists, a simple parade of styles and trends.
He doesn’t consider it obvious or uncool to choose hits, like “I Need Your Love” by The Rapture and “If I Ever Feel Better” by Phoenix, he doesn’t back down from the possibility, which would make many scream scandal, of mixing Röyksopp and The Smiths, he proposes new emerging electronic music artists (Villalobos, Minizza, and the Romans Jolly Music) and retrieves lesser-known club classics (Jorgen Paape and Justus Kohncke directly from Berlin), but above all debunks the cold and detached figure of the record selector by giving vent, with numerous “acapella” interventions, to his great desire to sing.

On stage for almost ten years, the Dj Kicks collection has moved from the early attention (the compilations by K&D and Thievery Corporation above all) to the use and consumption of only DJs with later publications, leaving young Erlend and his danceable sound, but not only, the task of rekindling general interest.