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Hans-Peter Lindstrøm demurely set up his Macbook Pro, keyboard, samplers, and bottle of Corona behind a façade of calm and excitement. He was eager to supplant the gastric bass and tweeting highs of Studio B’s house DJ with his own mix, but at the same time he wasn’t rubbing it in.
The same went for his throbbing but playfully cool set. Lindstrøm (his DJ-ing nom de guerre) crafted ethereal polyphonies, enveloping listeners and the room in a gradually pulsating haze. While the side stage’s speakers perfectly blended weaving choruses of electronic whistles, buzzes, and washes, an unsuspecting bass would penetrate the mix, however coyly. It was only after the crowd was fully immersed in a pounding yet diffused disco beat that a song’s climax was ever evident.
And that was the beauty of the scruffy Norwegian’s set. Lindstrøm took the music in a direction where all eventually wanted to be, but without the obvious cues and countdowns—only after teasing and toying a beat so much that once it finely arrived you almost forgot you were craving it to begin with.
He did it with “Where You Go I Go Too”, the epic title track of his most recent release, taunting jittery marimba sounds and guitar with other whimsical accents. As these sounds coalesced with a spectrum of synths and frenetic high-hats, an underlying bass became self-evident. But ever so gradually. Only the heroic entrance of bright ascending synthesizer lines finally confirmed the beat’s summit. After a euphoric acme was firmly in place the beat sublimated back into more atmospheric tinkering, and the next subtly towering track was underway.
That Lindstrøm submerges his beats, only for them to resurface at pinnacle moments, is a reflection of his personal MO. “The melody is the backbone of a track. The beat is just a wrapping” he told an interviewer once.
The strangest aspect of his set was that the crowd seemed more interested in staring at him crouch behind his setup than in dancing to the perfect mixes coming from it. Getting down to his powerfully delicate blend of Culture Club synths, boogie disco horns, and trance beats seemed to escape half the club. It didn’t matter: Lindstrøm out danced them all onstage himself.
