This is how the song came about: "Seen"

Text: Kai Lofthus

If you search for Rytmeklubben on Wimp or Spotify, you won't find many hits. At the time of writing, there are 58 people following them on Spotify and 1.120 on Facebook. They have two versions of "Seen" out (a 3:33 version and a 3:05 radio edit, released at the end of June this year on Raw Juice Records), remixes for Kaja Gunnufsen, Sea Change and supermale, as well as a one-minute audiobook about them that Pstereofestivalen produced in 2013. Nevertheless, they have already caught the interest of NRK P3 with their fresh, progressive music in a genre they call #keygencore. And behind them they have the London-based manager Tom Rose, who also works for Propeller Recordings.

The future is clearly ahead for Rytmeklubben. On November 14th, they will perform at the Ja Ja Ja festival in London. They are set up at the Lexington, an intimate and stylish lounge bar in Islington (where Rough Trade Records has a music quiz every Monday night). The same evening will also feature Blaue Blume (Denmark), Fufanu (Iceland), Nils Bech (Norway) and Noah Kin (Finland). One of the songs they will perform will definitely be "Seen", which is on the playlists of NRK P3. Music director Mats Borch Bugge explains why:

– We chose to playlist “Seen” because we thought the song was cool. The whole constellation is also reminiscent of the French Birdy Nam Nam. But what makes the song cool? Yes, it represents new, Norwegian club music in a very nice way, by combining a good genre mix within electronic music and a clear hook. Furthermore, it has been fun to see that Rytmeklubben is also able to bring the sound into the live format, and with that add further life to it. The song is progressively produced, it makes the narrow wide in a good way. The pauses appear as syncopations and make “Seen” durable.

From remixes to own productions
Several artists have fallen for them. Kaja Gunnufsen's "F— ta" is among the songs that have received the rhythm club treatment. So have supermale's "Revolver Dance" and Sea Change's "Let's Dance". When asked about their form of collaboration, Rytmeklubben's Ole Torjus Hofvind says that it was a very new experience for four producers to create their own song from scratch.

– Previously, we have mostly worked with remixes of other people's songs. Then you have a starting point to start from, while with your own material you have to generate this starting point yourself. Beyond this, it is much the same work process. Four individuals working on a computer. Since this was the first song we were going to release as an official Rytmeklubben single, we were concerned that it would be a good representation of Rytmeklubben. The whole process has taken a very long time, but we have learned a lot about ourselves and doing things together, he says.

Inspired by melodies, bass, club and pop music
According to Hofvind, there are no direct sources of inspiration beyond various club and pop music. In an interview with kakaomusikk.no (http://kakaomusikk.no/bli-bedre-kjent-med-rytmeklubben/) he says that Rytmeklubben can be described with the following three words from Charlotte Thorstvedt: "I love bass". Their most important tool is Ableton Live, while on "Seen" they supplemented it with a Roland D-50, Korg MS2000, Juno 60 and a midi keyboard when they were in the studio. When they were going to write "Seen", the melody came first. He says it took a long time for the song to come to fruition.

– In the beginning we didn't have much thought about what the lyrics were going to be about, while the melody was more or less in the synth elements from before. The vocals in the song are just an excerpt from what we've recorded. We sang in a lot of different raw material with different angles. In the end we cut out what we thought sounded cool. All vocals are played in a different key and then pitched to the original key. The purpose of this was that we didn't want a human vocal sound, but rather more computer-like. There was a lot of trial and error with the lyrics and melody to try to get a balance between a "pop topline" but also something that is less flashy and more sewn into the song as a whole, which is more natural for us as producers, and not an artist who sings, he says.

Things take time, even for the Rhythm Club
How did the spark for the first words/notes come? What kind of environment were you in?, we ask. Hofvind answers:

– We were sitting in a white room with a sloping ceiling and office furniture. The light from the sunny surroundings outside broke through the dirty windows on the sloping ceiling and filled the room with yellow-white light from above. In addition to this, we had set up a small studio for the occasion, consisting of our beloved Roland D-50, a computer, a few more synths and a couple of speakers. The first chords came more or less by themselves while we tried out some progressions on the keyboard, closely followed by a melody that was carved out of a longer jam on an ugly hardstyle sound. The way it usually goes is that one person sits and plays and tries out different things, while the rest sit a bit scattered around the room and maybe do other things, like play Pokémon or write invoices, and say “mmhm, yes!” once in a while and “hmm, nope” other times. The chords and melody became the supporting elements for the intro that later turned out to lay the foundation for the rest of the song. We returned to this studio almost every day for a month and repeated the process, finally ending up with a finished song!

Credits:
Composers/lyricists: Ole Torjus Hofvind, Tom Henrik Melting Basmo, Martin Basmo Aspen, Henrik Haraldsen Sveen (Screenplay)

Wimp: https://www.wimp.no/wweb/album/31259335
Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/track/4Qi3N25uth0SEeoMIdAElw
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rytmeklubben