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Monday, 22 October 2012

Touched by the hand of Todd


Todd Terje is an oddity, he has been around for what seems like ages and has carved out a niche for himself as the king of midtempo dance music. His productions are few and far between, there was the massive 'Snooze for Love', 'Ragysh' and 'Eurodans' which was so good it caught the attention of Take That's Robbie Williams, who borrowed it and changed it just enough not to get sued on his single 'Candy'






Terje benefitted from being friends with the Norwegian producer Erot, who produced Annies first album before tragically passing away. Norway became a bit vogue in the early Noughties thanks to acts like Royksopp and Annie, and Terje has always quietly been in the background, growing more and more obsessed with disco but not releasing many of his own tunes...

To have roughly 33% of your productions plagerised by Robbie Williams is a bit of a bizarre achievement for anyone to write gushy blogs about... so what is it about Todd Terje that makes him such hot property at the moment? It's his remixes and re-edits of course. while his own material is thin on the ground, he is one of the most proliffic re-editors in the game, most DJ's will re-edit tracks to make them more dance floor friendly, it is a trend that has declined among DJ's in the past few years mainly because if there is a track that needs a re-edit, the chances are it has already been done by Todd Terje.


Paul Simon has been done...


Stevie Wonders Superstition...



The Bangles, Walk like an Egyptian... is there no place he wont go?



...I think that by the time you've remixed Demis Roussos, its safe to say that is the case. The track that led me to write this was a track I'd heard on Ivan Smagghe's Walk in the Woods, for Tsugi, I rarely check tracklistings unless I have to and with this one song nesting towards the end of the mix, I simply had to. It was driving, synthy, freah and timeless. It turned out it was a Terje remix of the late 70s New Wave band The Units. Apparently 'High Pressure Days' was a reasonably big track in its time getting lost of airplay on the radio both in Britain and in the States upon its release in 1979, but I was but a twinkle in my papas nutsack at that point so I have had to backtrack to hear it... I'm so glad I did



Thankyou Todd.

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