Bendik Baksaas provides a deep dive on his upcoming LP, as well as his Nordic roots

Hey Bendik, it’s great to chat with you. As we head into the latter months of the year, could
you give us some personal highlights of 2024?

Nice to meet you! Well, I am a middle class musician, usually having main inflow fromplaying gigs. As inflation has increased dramatically the last few years, but fees for gigs lag behind, I find it tough as I earn the same numbers from gigs as five years ago, the money has lost so much value that its hard to cover everything for me and my family. As a result of this, the business side of my artistic practice’s most celebrated highlight is that I am still sustaining as a full time musician. On the social aspect I am very happy to work with Immersions, this is the name of the collected forces of four festivals/clubs in four European countries that seek to share knowledge, interplay and artistic technique in an open source flowing frictionless between the four communities. From Norway the contributor is Monument, famous worldwide for their festival and highly regarded podcast series (I headlined the live night of their city festival last year). That was definitely a big highlight in terms of sound system, vibe and grandiosity of space and crowd. The other parts of the network is FOMO in Poland, The Club Gare in Portugal, and Kablys in Lithuania. All scenes are bautas in their own right. Through Immersions, I connect with a lot of interesting and inspiring talent in my hometown and other cities. I also work with them as an instructor in modular synthesisers. On the musical side, my highlight this year is that it feels like I’m coming into my own sound. I feel confidence and a clear mind in musical decisions as I produce or play live. The work does itself, and the musical output is coherent and most of the time good.

This month, you’re serving up the latest release for Snick Snack Music with the full length
LP, ‘Flex Core’; we’d love to know more about the album and the tracks that make it up,
what can you tell us?

Its an album celebrating the dancing itself; it’s as easy as that, that’s the name of the album and the musical areas I explore there. All riffs and melodies are made on my small modular synth case, and most drums are made in Ableton. I use a Tascam Portastudio cassette deck for distortion and tape delay/ The music has a good variation of themes and rhythms I heard while dancing, with melodies that are very repetitive yet flexible, and sometimes freely evolving. On the opening and closing track I have featured vocalists; I love those tracks including the instrumentals, it’s fun to play in the club.

You’ve had a diverse musical background including everything from heavy metal to jazz;
how did you gravitate towards the sounds of techno?

I’ve always loved music, but dance music caught me in my late teens. I played electric bass in a nudsico/space disco band in Oslo called Proviant Audio, and hile playing the local clubs with them, I experienced and internalised the timeless Roland TR-909. When I was twenty, I moved from my small home-town to Oslo where I worked as a DJ playing disco and electronica. I suddenly found myself on a dancefloor in Culture Box in Copenhagen as Jeff Mills played a set for the Distortion Festival; I remember only hearing the bass, nothing else. The sound was all bass, in a way beyond my comprehension at the time. A seed was planted there, and then I went to Berlin…

As a Norwegian producer, how have you been able to infuse your Nordic roots into dance
records?

I work with traditional musicians. I have a duo called Folketechno with Ulf-Arne Johannesen, we
work with interplay between my techno drums and melodic and harmonics from his Munnharpe
(Duck Duck Go it) a small instrument placed in the mouth making one tone, but the musician uses
his mouth as a very resonant filter to play the overtones in a melodic fashion. We also use his
traditional accordions, playing melodic motifs from the old music of the valleys of
Norway. When people dance to traditional Norwegian music its usually in tempos around 90-110BPM (roughly speaking). We find polymeric combinations that makes it possible to have two different grooves going in the same time, but they live in a polymeric relation. For example: if we play a song meant for traditional dance in 96 bpm, I let the accordion play its riff and produce drums in 144 bpm, which gives me 3 beats at the time he plays 2 beats. It sounds very natural, but as a dancer you can decide yourself what pulse to follow, which gives the raver another option to slow-dancing than the boring half-beat. It’s more stretchy that way, and the traditional dancers can dance their Halling (YouTube it) while the driving techno drums land in the same underlying pulse, but faster in metric.

Can you tell us about your experience performing live? Will you be looking to take this
album on the road, either in live form or as a DJ?

When I play live, I combine produced drums and melodies with improvisations on the modular synth, mixed and blended together in a DJ-manner. I aim to let improvisation be a big part of the music; at the same time, I play parts of tracks or full arrangements at times. Almost all of the drums are produced, as I trust my monitors better than the sound I hear behind the club PA. Melodies and riffs I play in the moment on the modular synth. I like to play this way because the sound represents both what I’m doing in the moment and what I’m doing in the studio at that time. I’m playing a few gigs in Norwegian cities now with the material from the album, and I will go on a longer tour in spring.

Have you had any particular records on repeat recently?

Kjetil Jerve – Harmonic Conciousness,

Metapattern – Exercises in Restraint

Metapattern – No Signal

EMS – I (https://emstracks.bandcamp.com/album/i)

Do you have any other upcoming plans that you can share with us?

My label, Snick Snack, is releasing remasters of the legendary Norwegian cult band ‘Sadomaoistan’ with a collection of new remixes. I’ve participated with a remix of the track ‘Scud’; it’s a bit on the naughty side lyrically, so be warned if you translate the text. Other than that I am currently working on finalising a record with Folketechno, it will be released late next year.