A disappearing act of grand proportions. But not as an illusion. Rather one involving embracing spiritual emptiness and cleansing. And at the forefront a genre-defining sound engineer deciding to fully let go and rearrange his heart, head and soul.
TeeBee (Torgeir Byrknes) returns after a hiatus… from the bleeding edge of the sonic stratosphere, touching down briefly to share the otherworldly insights and gifts. Meaning: After a handful of promising teaser tracks, The Cosmic Carnival, the first solo album by the Norwegian drum and bass powerhouse in more than 20 years, is finally done and arrives 14 November 2025 on Flexout Audio.
After the end of his incredibly successful collaboration with Calyx, a new chapter beckons. With a crystal-clear vision and excellence that TeeBee so vividly portrays in the interview below. Something to be felt, before the real magic arrives, so to speak – through the heartfelt meanings conveyed about the journey by the free-associating genius himself.
So as we count down to potentially one of the biggest releases of 2025, read on to first-hand find out why exactly…
Tell us more about your decision to ‘disappear’ and what it brought you
After having an incredible career with Calyx & TeeBee, the best next step was actually just disappearing. I thought to myself, “what do I really want? Who is TeeBee? What do you sound like now? What’s your vision?” I have played every festival and every stage and wondered where my inspiration was going to come from.
I had all these moments where I took a break to do something for myself, to make something that makes me come alive. I started going through my sketches and realized I had about 130 that were worth finishing. I just started knocking them off one by one and making new things along the way.
All of a sudden, I rediscovered who I am, why I do this, and where I wanted to go. It was literally by removing myself from everything: from the whole scene, from everyone, from DJing, all of it.
I’m not going to take up space in this culture that means so much to me, unless I put something back in. And if I don’t put back my very best, then why would people want to come see me?
I realized I had strayed away from my original path and my alignment with myself, and it was a tough realization to come with for yourself when you’re like, “man, I’ve been on the road for 29 years, how come I’m only responding to this now?”. That lit a fire under me.
You moved back to Norway, why so?
There were many reasons. For one, I wanted to go back to Norway because I missed it. I missed the winters, the opportunities to go skiing if I wanted to. Having grown up in an alpine environment and that being such a big part of me, something that went missing for all those years I was abroad.
Then my son reached a certain age, where I wanted him to have the opportunities and experiences that I had growing up. That was a huge part of coming back.
The studio was like a natural evolution from that. I knew what I wanted; I needed something bigger and with multiple rooms to get the vision of what I’m trying to accomplish.
I just naturally fell back into a really nice, beautiful habitat of people I’ve known since I was a teenager. It’s been beautiful to reconnect and see what they’ve accomplished. It feels like a lot of stuff is coming full circle for me right now.
You’ve been in the game for so long, longer than many. What were maybe the decisions along the way that gave you the longevity that you think about now?
I think the key one was that I don’t drink alcohol, so I never got drunk. I drank it once when I was 17 and realized that with martial arts, it gets instilled in you to never reach a point where you can’t defend yourself.
I realized that if I was drunk, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself, and I’ve carried that with me. I also think you have to be hungry and honest with it.
If you have an agenda behind it, people are going to see through it. You also need to be good at making connections on the ground all over the world and returning to the same community with the same respect.
What can you tell us more about the idea behind the album itself?
I think the album is my love letter to the culture. I’ve been so fortunate that this culture has given me the most incredible journey and experiences. I owe it to myself and to the people. I want to show people that it still matters to be the dopest you can be.
This is me literally trying to be the dopest I can be. I’m super proud of the density of production I managed to put in there, and the way I compose. There’s a sound and a tone in all of it that has taken me a lifetime to get.
From inception to release, none of it left my studio. Every single thing has been done by me when it comes to mixing and mastering; every step of it has my touch. A part of me thinks it might be my last album, because I’m so confident behind the work that I’m putting out, and I know that it’s going to stand the test of time.
I am a Cosmic Carnival, so that was a natural title to put to it. It’s me basically daydreaming in my studio with sound.
What have you learned about yourself as an artist during this period of reinvention?
I have discovered that I like beauty more than I like sinister. And I have discovered that there are musical avenues within myself I didn’t even know I had. It feels amazing. I’m so confident in what I’m doing and how I’m doing it that I love what I’m doing so much that I don’t really care what anyone thinks about it. I’m back to that point.
I’ve been in a 170 world for so long that I don’t really have much to prove. But this album is me saying, “Hello, guys, I love you. This is what I have to offer. I’m really trying to sort of leave a piece of me here.”
How does it feel to write music now, in comparison to back in the days, when you were bouncing off ideas of somebody else?
For me, excellence comes from solitude. I’m a firm believer in that. My creative process is crazy; I have never, ever had a single idea in my life. I just sit down and I start playing like I am literally a kid with these sounds.
Due to my sonic understanding, that play becomes serious real quick, and everything just flows. I’ve never had writer’s block. I’m never worried that there isn’t going to be another one, because there always is.
But the moment I put an expectation behind it or try to make it fit into a certain format that doesn’t feel genuine, then it becomes hard. And that was a large part of fulfilling the contractual obligations for Calyx & TeeBee over all these years.
How do you reflect further on your current level as a producer?
I’m finally at a stage where I’m confident that whatever you throw at me, I can do. I’m also at a point where it was wise to actually do something with that too.
As the years have gone by, I’ve had offers from both majors and movie companies to become an engineer for them, because I am one of the nerds when it comes to sound. I’ve mastered nearly 4,000 drum and bass releases since 2020. I only do this for myself; it’s my obsession, my passion, my undying love.
I still think there are so many things that haven’t been done. I think people are being lazy and just jumping on each other, so I want to try to be the antidote to that.
What more advice for young upcoming people?
Never make it too serious. If you’re not having fun, just don’t do it. Make sure you have fun, because that’s what it’s all about.
Don’t get stuck on how good your mix is. The most important thing is to leave a piece of yourself in there. Leave the piece of yourself that you want to last forever in your music. That’s the starting point.
And, for me, it was finding something hard that required something specific of me that only I could do for myself. Martial Arts was that elevator in terms of understanding the value of repetition and striving for personal excellence. The (lack of a) relationship with alcohol – as to always being able to put self-control first – also played a role.
Lastly, I will say something controversial: if you have a job on the side, unless you really need it, just remember that every moment you’re not working on your music, there’s some kid sitting in his mom’s kitchen in a cold hut somewhere, on some hand-me-down earbuds, who no one told him that sounding like Noisia was hard. So he found a way. That’s your competition.
What have been the principles behind your success from the start?
The principles started when I was six years old and they are martial arts. I have X amount of years of Hung Kung Fu, Goju Ryu Karate and Jang style Tai Chi. The discipline that comes from that, I carry with me everywhere.
I believe if you’re going to do anything at all, do it to your absolute excellence. Why not? What have you got to lose? And I mean that in terms of how you clean your plate, how you organize your closet, how you walk outside, how you grab someone’s hand, how you don’t lose someone’s eye contact.
Carry yourself like you own it. If anything, what the world needs right now is for the ones who can shine, to shine as much as humanly possible.
Tell us about your story of being rejected as a non-British artist
I went to England for the first time in the early ‘90s and my music got rejected. All I’ve ever wanted was to be part of this culture. I went back to Norway heartbroken.
My parents sent me to a language course in Hastings during the following summer. While there, I sent a letter to SL2, the rave legends, Slipmatt wrote me back and said he was going to send a box of records for me to use in a DMC competition.
I walked into the local record store and asked, “Is there a box to TeeBee from Slipmatt?” Everyone looked at me like, “Who are you?”. I said I could play, so they told me to play right there. I opened the records, started DJing in the shop, and within ten minutes, they asked me to open up for Randall on Friday at The Crypt.
I didn’t even know these records. That’s what I mean. If you get ignored by the door, go and create your own moment.
I flunked school, stayed with the locals all summer, and when I passed by London on the way back, this time all the DJs took my DATs (Digital Audio Tapes).
Then I came out of the closet as a non-British artist in the year 2000, when I won the Knowledge Award for Best International Producer… And after that the floodgates opened.
Who do you think are the guys that really push the envelope when it comes to drum and bass?
I don’t really think anyone’s trying hard enough, to be honest. I wish people would take more chances. It’s hard for me to even find anything to be excited about. If I’ve heard it before, I kind of don’t want to hear it.
Just try and at least put some effort in it and make it a bit more than a roller or something. I respect my old peers, but I love hearing an Imanu tune, because I never know what I’m going to get. That’s what I’m talking about – people who actually try to allow themselves to be different.
Talking about doing whatever you want, was this a conscious choice to go with Flexout Audio for the album to have that freedom? What’s the story?
The thing with Flexout was I had my own label, Subtitles, and for years after moving back after the pandemic, we got a new team, but nothing really clicked. I just fell short on a lot of points. Some people let me down and I let some people down, and I was done with it.
I never wanted to have a label ever again. I connected with Tom and Marcel from Flexout last year, and it’s been a long road of talking and figuring out that I needed a solid foundation and someone who thinks differently.
The Flexout team saw my vision for what I want to do, and agreed to take on the “> Greater Than” project with DJ Craze and Palmer Reed, which I really believe in. Ultimately, the kindness and straightforwardness they (Flexout Audio) portray is also something I live by. I don’t want anyone to tell me something to please me; that doesn’t serve me at all.
If you’ve got something to say, come at me with it straight. I don’t need to walk in a circle. That willingness and also the hunger to think, “where can we actually take this?”, bonded me with them.
I’m also stepping in as a consultant for the label and working in tandem with them to use my experience to help develop these artists and maybe even get into signing vocalists and pairing them up with production teams.
Great.
A bit more on the technical side of the new album. Are there any new VST’s or equipment you introduced into your renewed workflow?
What’s interesting about this album is I am hardware-based, so I use external units for processing sound to get the tone out. I only use subtractive EQing and suppressing a signal inside the computer.
Anything that has to do with enhancement or tone is external factors. The reason it sounds the way it sounds is because of my knowledge of transistors and transformers and op-amps and how electricity actually shapes different waveforms in different ways and why a certain distortion is more pleasing than another distortion.
A lot of tracks are made by sounds that are not instruments at all. I don’t need anything to do with an instrument to make a sound. All I need is to isolate certain frequencies of any sound and you can make anything you want.
For example, a lot of my sounds are from isolating three different frequencies in one sound and then running that into a convulsion space. So basically, then I have a sound in a room that comes from three specific frequencies pulled out of an object that has nothing to do with sound.
I already know that the resonant will be unlike any instrument. Well, so I’ll put that in convolution and then I might put that convolution again into a really long reverb tail to hear what it sounds like as a drone. Then I might mono it and see how the phase is and then see how I can play with that in mono to put it in a new space again.
I can go on like this for hours.
So perhaps as an example of one of the tracks already available, could you relay that to one of those?
I mean, on the ones that are out, not so much, because the music was very musical. But there are sounds, for instance, the bass in The Lightning That Scarred Mars – it just sounds like a monster; there’s nothing that’s going to sound like that.
And that’s actually that sound was like, “Wow, when I got to that after a few hours, I was like, ‘Wow, that sounds like The Lightning That Scarred Mars ‘ and I said, ‘Oh, that’s the track title’.”
That’s sort of the thing about it, but I think that’s what people forget these days, because everyone can go to Splice to find a fat drum kit. In five minutes, you can have listened to 20 bass lines and decided on three of them, and then 15 minutes later, you can put some strings in. But that’s not the fun of creation, is it?
That’s not what I do it for. I do it for myself, to see where I can take it. I think we’ll see a distinct change, because there are a lot of kids out there at the moment in different genres, and especially around the 135 to 145 tempo, they’re making some wild shit.
It’s so wild it feels a bit revolutionary and dangerous, and that’s where you’ll find me, man. Where the spark is, is always where I want to be, because that’s where the fun is. It’s not fun where the herd is jumping around to the same shit.
That’s not where I belong, you know. I love it in the trenches, and that’s where the fun is, with the kids, man. Watch what the kids are doing. It’s all about what the kids are doing. If you don’t understand it, that’s where you need to go.
What about DJing, is it something you’d like to focus on more, perhaps even touring?
A hundred percent. DJing is what I was first and foremost. I started off wanting to be a battle DJ, and I just stumbled upon producing at one point. I have another project that I’m about to launch with DJ Craze and a singer called Palmer Reed from America, as > Greater Than.
So now I’ve got the world’s greatest DJ at my fingertips showing me stuff. I’m looking to elevate things. I’ve been looking into Serato Stems, which he’s playing, and I’m definitely switching over to that, because of the amount of opportunity that comes with it. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities when you have the stem options. That really excites me, and that’s what I’ll be doing my tour with for sure.
Are there any specific things you still like to mention?
I just want to emphasize how excited I am to be presenting myself in the way I want to go forward. I can’t wait to see what it brings. It’s going to be sick.
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