In 2008 (Little) Nobody looks to become a somebody

In 2008 (Little) Nobody looks to become a somebody

15 July, 2008 | 12.39AM

• Written by: elektrax
• Filed under: Music News :

The name is something of a misnomer.

Little Nobody is, in fact, already somebody: Andrez Bergen, formerly from Melbourne, Australia, but stationed in Tokyo, Japan, these past seven years.

Google him, and there’re about 2,470 entries, and he even has a hefty profile on Wikipedia. Not that these inroads are much of an accomplishment these days.

Google the little known actor, George Sanders, and you’ll find 613,000.

Sanders is Andrez Bergen’s favorite cinematic star, and that’s saying something, as Bergen is a movie journalist. He’s also a photographer, writer, musician, DJ, editor, teacher, and record label impresario. On top of all these he’s a dad.

He’s written for The Age newspaper in Australia, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper in Japan, Mixmag in the U.K., Geek magazine in the U.S.A. He also has a sci-fi novel that’s about to be published by American punk publisher Another Sky.

He has his fingers in dozens of pies, some of them more successful than others.

Little Nobody is one of those pies, a labor of love that Bergen has been continually concocting and rotating on the slow-bake for about 11 years now.

The project is his musical outlet, an irreverent one that draws on his loves of Dada, early industrial musicians Cabaret Voltaire, and William Burroughs/Brion Gysin cut-ups, as much as it does upon electronic and club music trends, and kitsch movie samples.

The project has morphed from hip-hop, acid, trip-hop, breaks and disco on the first Little Nobody album, ‘Pop Tart’ (1998) into more eclectic, house oriented material on ‘Action Hero’ (2000), an album that was one of the 4 final nominees for the Australian Dance Music Album of the Year at the inaugural Dance Music Awards in 2001.

That year, Little Nobody popped up on Si Begg’s wonderful label, Noodles Discotheque.

2001 was also the year that Bergen moved to Japan, and Little Nobody dropped off the Australian club music radar as he settled into the scene over there.

And so, for many of us here in Oz, that was that. The Japanese obviously thought otherwise, as Bergen’s output did continue on a rash of Japanese records, and Bergen toured Europe, the U.S., Canada and much of Asia, but rarely made it back to his home country. Until now, that is.

2008, it turns out, is an exceptional watershed year for Little Nobody, the year his electronic voice broke. Not just back in Australia, or over in Japan, but internationally, finally.

Bergen now really is shaping up as Someone B.I.G (another of the man’s musical outlets), thanks in no small part to new technology (digital download) and the wonderful, feverish work of Sydney-based label head-honcho, DJ Hi-Shock, who runs Elektrax Recordings and Hypnotic Room.

This year alone, Hi-Shock’s Hypnotic Room imprint has worked not only with Melbourne-based electronic music luminaries Zen Paradox and TR-Storm, but has unveiled a string of back-catalogue Little Nobody classics covering 1997 to 2006 (the Techelectric Tangents series), a live EP (called, appropriately enough, ‘Live in Tokyo’), the critically-applauded new studio release, ‘Wayward Seafarers’ (Australian magazine, 3D World, called it “A leftfield electronic delight"), and the upcoming ‘Game Over: Reset EP’.

And that’s been in the short period of March to July.

Hypnotic Room also just released a Little Nobody remix compilation called ‘Little Nobody Presents Slam-Dunk Ninja: The Perspicacious Remix Selection’, which has remixes by the likes of Japan’s Captain Funk, Steve Cobby from Fila Brazillia, Jason Leach from Subhead, Si Begg, and Tobias Schmidt.

So we’re looking at over a dozen releases, only half way through the year, and most of it new material that explores the fringes and boundaries of electronic music in occasionally exceptional new ways. That Bergen continues to be an innovator is without question; it’s just surprising that a decade after he kick-started the project, this year is his most prolific and the output more stunning than ever before.

“I somehow located that elusive groove,” he laughingly told me over the phone from Tokyo last week, “and I’m hanging onto it this year for dear life!”

Indeed he has. And if this particular “groove” continues, Little Nobody may just shape up to be the most ironic job-title of 2008.

By Terry Rance (Australia), 2008

Photo: Little Nobody playing Live

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