In Bergen, Erlend Øye was known, from his teenaged days, as a fanboy
around town, the guy with the red hair and large spectacles, always down
the front, always eager to meet the band. When Belle & Sebastian first
came to town, Erlend nearly cried; and, from there, it's not a big step
to the time when Øye himself b'came famous, as one half of ultra-soft
soft-pop acoustic duo Kings of Convenience, who're kinda the Norwegian
new-millennial equivalent of Simon & Garfunkel. Initially inked up to
Americkn twee-pop enclave Kindercore, Kings of Convenience soon came
aboard on Source, and, in such company, Erlend got to meet a whole bunch
of the right elecktro folk. So, in 2001 and 2002, he hooked up with a
bunch of shithot beatmakers, letting his New Order fanboy fantasies play
out to the peerless programming punched in by Schneider TM, Prefuse 73,
Minizza, Morgan Geist, and Soviet. After his awesome Unrest longplayer
arose in ought-two, Øye then learned that, once you've made an
electronick record, people assume you know how to DJ, meaning that he
suddenly had to polish up on his turntable skills so he could let his
nascent elecktro fame pay the bills. But, like any songsmith worth his
weight in Smiths longplayers, the Norwegian crooner soon found that
merely sequencing together records isn't really that interesting. And,
so, as disc-jockey, he soon start'd indulging in karaoke, singing along
with his favorite tracks, then over instrumental versions of his
favorite tracks, and, then, in mixin'-up spirit, singing lyrics from
his favorite songs over completely different tracks. And there's
plenty of this going on throughout his choice DJ Kicks set, in which he
croons "Always on My Mind" over Skateboard, "Intergalactic Autobahn"
over Justus Köhncke, "Venus" (getting the lyrics wrong) over Usui
Fantasia, and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" over a bangin'
remix of Röyksopp, that track as much under the influence of his pal
Schneider TM as his childhood hero Morrissey. Speaking of pals, Øye
keeps much of his set close to home, spinning songs from collaborateurs
Minizza and Morgan Geist, and even dishing up mixes of a couple of his
own cuts. And the best back-to-back comes when he serves up Kings of
Convenience's remix of Cornelius's amazing "Drop," which finds him
singing (on the record) in his native Norse tongue; then, as the song
nears its close, he starts murmuring the first voice from Phoenix's
killer pop-song "If I Ever Feel Better," this foreshadowing him dropping
that evergreen single mere bars later. He does a similar thing with The
Rapture's "I Need Your Love," singing the first verse in karaoke style
over the intro, b'fore handing things over to Luke Jenner for the
authentic on-record neo-no-wave wailing.
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