Today, Swedish producer Rudolf Nordström aka Mr. Tophat announces his debut album “Dusk to Dawn” a three LP dark-disco odyssey that features live instrumentation from some of Sweden’s finest classical musicians (Mats Bergström, Per-Erik Adamsson) as well as appearances from his friends and collaborators Robyn, Axel Boman and Kleerup.
The Mr. Tophat sound is one that goes on and on, deep into the night. “Dusk to Dawn” is an epic collection of underground disco and house tracks, synthesising Western classical with contemporary club music. It’s an album that rewards multiple listens, a sprawling, ecstatic climb to the sublime, layered and full. It’s an album that pushes out into new uncharted territories.
As Rudolf writes in the text in the gatefold vinyl; “the first ideas of creating an actual album came in the spring of 2016, not long after the breakup from a long relationship. A dark time full of contemplation and re-evaluation of my life. That September I got the first sonic images, right after a month I’d spent living on Ibiza. The powerful sunsets, the dramatic skies over the Balearic sea, the starlit nights and the beautiful sunrises. They looked like Renaissance paintings by Rubens or Michelangelo. I remember swimming in the ocean with a view of a pretty horizon, filled with love and soft emotions. I remember standing alone in the pitch-black night, how I felt the Mediterranean storm and heavy rain hit my cheeks. It felt as I was crying and screaming, even though there was nothing but silence. The thunder lit up the cloudy sky like a strobe, to suddenly a few hours later with the turn of dawn bring everything into calm and peaceful nature - like everything was reset. This reminded me of life, death, primal aspects and the biological processes in general. As I made the album I was reading Derrida’s essay “Plato’s Pharmacy”. How he describes the moon and night has been an important influence on the record”.
To capture the sublime on “Dusk to Dawn” Mr. Tophat brought Sweden’s finest classical musicians into the studio. At the same time, some of the 25 tracks on the record are pure synth driven trance, while “Balearic Moonwalk feat. Kleerup” is on a pop-house tip. The result juxtaposes experimental textures with pure rhythmic momentum. On LP highlight “Hedonism” he collaborates again with Robyn (having first worked together on the “Trust Me” EP in 2017).
Mr. Tophat was an avid clubber as a teen, way before making his name as a cult DJ; “everything started when my childhood friend Kalle and I first visited Berghain. It was 2008 and we were 18 years old. We had found each other being two individualists with our own nerdy interests. Together we plunged into them, Kalle in hairstyling, me in electronic dance music, computer games and cyber-punk. With borrowed fake ID’s, platform shoes, blue-dyed hair and like our idols from “Party Monster” we overdressed and started raving in the forests and clubbing in the city of Stockholm. Berlin and Berghain became a place we went and visited almost once a month during a two year period. Ever since those days I’ve always loved and felt a big passion for the rave and club scene. As a space where you can freak out, be yourself, queer and believe in hedonism. It shall and should be about freedom. I guess that’s why the scene and the music attracted me.”
The hours from “Dusk to Dawn” signify a time when you can cast off your inhibitions and be free for Tophat. “The history reminds me of why I’m even creating music, about my past, my feeling of techno-punk, then and now and everything in-between which has been of significance to this album and my artistry”. It’s this refusal to conform, working in tandem with his sonic perfectionism that makes “Dusk to Dawn” such a compelling, neo-romantic soundscape, a free-associating moon-walk through time and space. Thinking back to the time in Ibiza, Mr. Tophat remembers “the turquoise sky and the coloured sea in peach were faded together into a seamless vision, the horizon was impossible to navigate; meanwhile the bright dusk was filled with hate, darkness and mayhem. Nature - so simple, but still so complex.” “Dusk to Dawn” tells the tale of those nights.
