We start them young over here in the Border Community, and they don't come much younger than our pet Swede Petter Nordkvist. At the tender age of 19 he put out his first record, the sublime 'These Days' on Holland's Deep records, closely followed by the two slices of loveliness on vinyl that was his 'Six Songs EP' for his second home Border Community. But all that was over two years ago now, during which time the young Swede has spent a year or so in Berlin, squeezed in a few tracks and remixes here and there for labels like Deep, GU Music and Manual, and celebrated his twenty-first birthday. And as he returns with his second release on Border Community, the killer double pairing of bass driven rave monster 'Some Polyphony' and twitchy Swedish tech-funk of 'Untight', the boy really has come of age. Like most of his Border Community label mates, Petter's sound is one which naturally falls between several camps and doesn't take kindly to any efforts to slot it neatly into established pigeonholes. The key to Petter's winning approach has been to carve out his own unique niche in the musical spectrum, in the process winning himself fans from all corners: a more solidly diverse young talent you’d struggle to find. Petter’s music wears its diverse influences on its sleeve, fusing together techno, electro, dub, ambient, acid, breaks and deep house in his own inimitable way. His tracks are equally at home in the sets of just about any DJ that is currently doing it: Miss Kittin, Nick Fanciulli, Laurent Garnier, Josh Wink, Trevor Jackson, Steve Bug, Damian Lazarus and even Prince of Prog Sasha, who revived and remixed ‘These Days’ for his experimental ‘Involver’ compilation. But none of his supporters have been more vocal than Border Community main man and production soul mate James Holden. “On a technical level, I don't think many people can compete with his production – it doesn't sound like anyone else at all,” Holden explains. “I get really jealous listening to it. He's technically very stunning, very innovative and very musical.” Early in his career, as is the natural progression for any young music addict, Petter turned his hands to Djing, his diverse tastes manifesting themselves in an already fairly distinctive hybrid of electro-tinged dubbed-out house and techno, off the back of which he was able to begin exploring the clubs of Europe. But it is with the recent development of his own live set that the 21 year old has really come into his own: one hour of twitchy techno-funk as tight as his jeans, which pulls off the enviable feat of pushing all of the audience's buttons whilst remaining ever true to his own high artistic values. Ever alert and responsive to his audience, the Petter approach to the live show involves selecting which track to play next on the fly, in a manner which has more in common with the reactiveness of a DJ than your standard pre-planned static Ableton chugalong. A serial clip-maker, with a back catalogue of as-yet-unreleased music as stunning and as extensive as Petter has, we can of course be sure that there is a lot more to come from this young producer yet. All too often emergent artists are described as a unique talent who set to make waves in the production world over the years to come, but in Petter’s case we genuinely, wholeheartedly, believe this is true. We hope you will too.
