Oslo: 10:30 p.m. a fuzzy Norwegian picks up his phone for an interview. The man, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, best known mononymously by his surname, is in his creative third trimester (that is to say, his second official studio album will be “birthed” shortly after this article goes to press), and there are some pains. The album is different—a lot different—from his work since he started putting out singles in 2003.
     “Sometimes I’ll just do the opposite of what I feel everyone else is doing,” he says in throaty Nordic singsong. “It might not be the best thing. I guess I’m kind of digging my own grave, slowly but surely.”
       Since he began releasing music, Lindstrøm, along with his main collaborators Prins Thomas and Christabelle, has been cutting against the grain, and finding, perhaps frustratingly, a loyal fanbase of DJs and club kids that follow his techno grooves, Balearic blends, and left-field house to the ends of the earth. But this album, Six Cups of Rebel, is full of experimental textures and maximalist concepts divergent from what many of those devotees are anticipating. I’m starting to get the impression that Lindstrøm is really quite nervous.
“I’m not even sure if I’m expecting people to dance to this new album at all. I’m expecting a lot of people not to like this album,” Lindstrøm says with something between an uneasy laugh and a bit of self-doubt.
       Lindstrøm has been jogging and swimming lately. He likes the high that physical activity gives him. Plus, it clears his mind for the studio. Other than that, the inspiration for Six Cups of Rebel starts with prog and soldiers through some very unusual patches of investigations in sound. A prog-y simmer opens the album, which builds to and maintains a tempo and a mood all the way through, which is just the way Lindstrøm wants it.
       Then, Lindstrøm makes a sudden U-turn. He brings up Vangelis, the Greek new age artist best known for the Chariots of Fire soundtrack. Not exactly exciting material for inspiration, if you’re familiar. “I mean, I’m not a huge fan of him,” he says. “There’s some tracks, like the track me and Christabelle covered, ‘Let It Happen,’ one of the tracks he made in ’73, which I really like. If you listen to the Chariots of Fire soundtrack, it’s really cheesy, but, he actually did this album called Beaubourg, with two tracks on the album—one on side A and one on side B—and both tracks were made with two or three Yamaha CS-80s, which to so many synth collectors is the holy grail of synthesizers. It has a really nice ring modulator. It’s really intuitive to play, because all the sliders and knobs are located where they are supposed to be. It’s kind of the synthesizer equivalent to [Lou Reed’s notoriously unlistenable sound exercise] Metal Machine Music. You should play that for somebody who really cares for Chariots of Fire. They will probably deny that it’s the same guy who made it. And people like Neil Young doing the Trans album. I really like those guys because they’re doing something really weird from time to time. I just wanted to do something similar.”
        Maybe that initial read was wrong. Maybe Lindstrøm isn’t nervous, per se. Maybe he’s just trying to provoke. Maybe he just wants to stay away from being pigeonholed and forgotten in the clearence bins like so many electronic artists, left behind by shifting genres and technologies.
        “I guess what I should do next time is something really minimal,” he jokes. “I really like doing different stuff all the time. It’s important to me that what follows the previous album is made with a different set of ideas or rules. The worst thing that happened to me is that people hear my music, they go, ‘Oh, it’s kind of nice. Oh, it’s alright.’ I’d rather like people to hate or really dislike my music; I don’t want to end up in a supermarket. When I’m at the airport, they’re playing some of my older tracks. I don’t want to end up like that.”
        That won’t happen. Lindstrøm will continue to throw curveballs at us. And we will continue to love him, much to his chagrin.
Maybe that initial read was wrong. Maybe Lindstrøm isn’t nervous, per se. Maybe he’s just trying to provoke. Maybe he just wants to stay away from being pigeonholed and forgotten in the clearence bins like so many electronic artists, left behind by shifting genres and technologies.
       “I guess what I should do next time is something really minimal,” he jokes. “I really like doing different stuff all the time. It’s important to me that what follows the previous album is made with a different set of ideas or rules. The worst thing that happened to me is that people hear my music, they go, ‘Oh, it’s kind of nice. Oh, it’s alright.’ I’d rather like people to hate or really dislike my music; I don’t want to end up in a supermarket. When I’m at the airport, they’re playing some of my older tracks. I don’t want to end up like that.”
      That won’t happen. Lindstrøm will continue to throw curveballs at us. And we will continue to love him, much to his chagrin.