TeeBee

by Kingsley MarshallHaving broken through on the legendary Rugged Vinyl label in the early months of 1997, the space age sound mechanics of Torgeir Byrnes tore through a plethora of drum & bass luminaries including Juice, Audio Couture and Creative Source before finally settling at Paul Arnold's Certificate 18 imprint for his debut solo album Black Science Labs. The longplayer brought a further taste of off world dysfunction with bleak electronic soundscapes explored by robotic beat probes, precisely engineered at Byrnes' studio in his hometown of Bergen on the west coast of Norway. In the early months of 2001, Teebee established the Subtitles label with fellow Norwegian Kjetil Saagstad. Coming complete with solemn graphics and unusual track titles, the basslines of the Teebee produced debut "Gathering", drifted like smoke thrown up from a swirling percussive dervish with heavily reverbed key sequences underpinning Photek-like beat touches. The label has continued to outmaneuver its contemporaries, Byrnes focusing towards the floor as Saagstad provided the abstraction. Though his second album for Certificate 18, Through The Eye Of A Scorpion, proved virtually indistinguishable from his debut – his expertise in contrasting eerie orchestration with heavily reverbed melodic tones which twists amongst crisp rhythmic architecture attracted yet more followers to his sound.