Todd Terje: It’s Album Time

The cover shows Norway’s Todd Terje in 1960s lounge music mode, a fantasy carried over into the dance music producer’s debut album by space-age synths and Latin exotica. The pastiche is reminiscent, in its semi-ironic, semi-serious way, of French duo Air, a clear influence on the arpeggiated electronic tones, proggy keyboard solos and deep bass of “Preben Goes to Acapulco”.

Yet the attention to detail also gives the project a suffocating quality, most evident in those moments when it lifts – such as Bryan Ferry’s wonderful turn as world-weary sophisticate in a lushly melancholic cover of Robert Palmer’s “Johnny and Mary”.

Todd Terje

It’s Album Time

(Olsen Records)