For about five years, producer and DJ Oliver Nelson has been putting out remixes from his studio in the small Swedish town, Uppsala. This summer he finally released his first original single, Found Your Love, together with singer Skogrå (Formerly known as Heir), and another is on the way!
In Sweden, Oliver Nelson is still pretty unknown. His remix of Swedish pop-soul-singer Kim Cesarions 2014 hit ‘Undressed‘ got some air-time last year on Swedish radio, but apart from that the recognition of Oliver Nelson as a ‘nu disco-prodigy’ has come from abroad. I think of it as with every big Swedish music export; the swedes are the ones waking up last.
It seems like we swedes need some sort of confirmation from the cooler music markets, in the UK or the US, before we give credit to our own geniuses.
By now, Oliver Nelson’s tracks has around 26 million listens, and over 100 000 followers on the music-streaming site Soundcloud, spread all around the world. He’s made official remixes for artists like Marina & The Diamonds, Tove Lo and Janelle Monae. Oliver Nelsons remix-ambitions is as follow: make the hits discofied.
In the beginning of November I had a quick chat with the twenty-five year old after his gig at the London venue the Hoxton Basement. His UK-based management, Perfect Havoc, who apart from Oliver Nelson are responsible for Swedish producers Skogsrå, Tobtok, Ghassemi and Osmo, had arranged a Halloween-club.
“It all started with french DJ and producer Madeon, who started to follow me on Soundcloud. When he shared my remix of Urban Cones ”Deja Vu” the followers just poured in. That’s how I got in contact with my management Perfect Havoc”, Oliver Nelson says.
Since then he’s got praise from superstars like Norwegian house-producer Kygo, toured in the United Stated with hyped-up DJ/producer Hayden James and shared stage in China with the legend Todd Edwards (probably most famous for a younger audience as collaborator with Daft Punk on the song ”Face to face” and the latest album ”Random Access Memories”). Now he’s working on the follow-up single to ‘Found Your Love‘.
“I’m working with talented UK-singer Kaleem Taylor for this one. It’s basically done”, he says, though emphasizing that the release date is not yet decided.
Apart from working outside his comfort zone of remixing and making original music, he has also started doing production-work for other artists such as Rita Ora. Her new album, with a release date sometime in 2016, will contain two Oliver Nelson-produced songs.
It surely won’t be long before Scandinavia awaken and also enjoy Oliver Nelson’s superb discofied productions.