The house the 'Jokke built

There's definitely something in the water supply in Oslo. How else can we account for the intensely psychedelic disco presently escaping from there? Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas and Todd Terje have all proven their cosmic credentials: now it's time to add another astral voyager to the list. Joachim Dyrdahl - or diskJokke - is taking the electronic bleepery and live sounding drum funk of his contemporaries further into the stratosphere than ever before.

Resident at Oslo's increasingly influential Sunkissed club night, alongside pals Olanskii and G-HA, he's pioneering a space floatin' filmic dancefloor groove, which while coming from a similar root as other Scandisco heads, pursues a decidedly more technoid, lights-out direction. Smalltown Supersound's 2007 compilation 'Sunkissed' contained one of diskJokke's productions and so enamoured were the label with his lush sound they snapped him up for his own album release.
"Some friends of mine, Olanskii and G-HA, were putting together a DJ mix for Smalltown Supersound, and the label liked my tracks so much that they wanted to put out more on their Smalltown label," Dyrdahl confirmed.

The result is debut longplayer 'Staying In', out 31st March, which evokes a boat party by night in a Norwegian fjord, disco abandon surrounding you as the dazzling display of the Northern Lights shimmers in the distance. The thumping percussive rhythms, sub-low bass and weird, interweaving melodies of 'I Was Go To Marrocco And I Don't See You', and the eccentric, drum-on-every-surface-available Clangers space jam of 'Cold Out' are defiantly rooted in the now - but Dyrdhal's not one to forget the origins of the music he's making.
"My biggest influences are some of the old disco producers," he told DJmag. "For the arrangements, my favourite is Giorgio Moroder, and in terms of the beats I really like Cerrone."
Possibly the strangest aspect of the diskJokke sound though is the combination of heads down club beats with those ethereal, ghostly harmonies. But Dyrdhal's musical virtuosity isn't so surprising when you consider that he was learning the violin at the age of five. With classical a constant in his life, it was bound to emerge somewhere in his dance music productions.
"I guess there's classical in the arrangements and the structure of the music," Dyrdhal reckoned. "It's not a conscious process, but listening to it afterwards I can hear that it's romantic. It wasn't intentional but that's the way it came out."

The relationship with Smalltown Supersound is already proving fruitful: he's bagged remixes for Bloc Party, Spektrum and Lindstrøm, and other labels are already sniffing around, Prins Thomas and Steve Kotey's Full Pupp in particular.
"My first 12" on Full Pupp has just come out, and after that it's a lot of remixes, and there's also a remix 12" on Smalltown Supersound. It's a real club killer. I played it last week and it went through the roof!" he grinned.
This diskJokke ain't playing!