Todd Terje
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Todd Terje

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The work/life balance seems to have him torn. One the one hand, Terje is experiencing some of the best sound systems and biggest crowds of his career. “Sometimes it’s the most amazing thing ever,” he gushes. “I haven’t always played that many big sized clubs. I’ve come from the smaller rooms and the slower music. It’s good to now experience some really heavy, physical sound systems that blow you away. I actually sometimes get goose bumps when I play; I didn’t really get that earlier. Now it’s more just the physics of the bass. It just moves you. That’s a new thing for me, and it’s quite cool.”

But he’s also discovered that as his star grows bigger, the life of the touring DJ begins to weigh heavy. “DJing is a lot of fun, but the travelling is shit,” he sighs. “I would like to stay more in the studio, but it’s hard to make any money out of it. I need to find new ways of working to keep me healthy – I don’t want to DJ at this pace for very long. I know a lot of DJs that DJ much harder than me, more often than me, but I don’t understand how they do it. I think some people have it, and some people don’t. Me? I can do it for a length of time – but now, I really need to step down.”

The break that Terje yearns for isn’t likely to occur any time soon. Along with Prins Thomas and Lindstrøm, he has become the poster child of the oh-so-cool disco sound that has gripped the world over the last few years, and is likely to keep him busy for years to come. Despite holding his own notions about his exact sound, he’s okay with being pigeonholed by the media as ‘nu-disco’. “I don’t really mind [the term nu-disco] because I know that it’s just for [industry people] to sell it. If I don’t have any other labels that they can pigeonhole my music in, then that’s my problem. I don’t feel like I have to do this or that. As long as I don’t think like that, then they can do whatever they want.”

Terje returns to Australia this December for what seems like a yearly visit, playing club shows around the nation and Harbourlife in Sydney. So how does his set change when he plays a festival, compared to an intimate club gig? “The tendency this year has been that I’ve been playing more for a big audience because I’ve been booked to bigger clubs. Obviously if you play to a venue of 5000 people, you can’t play music without energy,” he explains. “But we’ll see – I never really plan anything.”

 

BY RICK WARNER

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