Ultraviolet

Between 1996 – 1997, Nicholas Sillitoe & Ken Theodorsen performed as, and produced a selection of electronic music releases under the artist name “Ultraviolet”. 

Ultraviolet primarily began as a side project to “Illumination”, with Nicholas Sillitoe already having got to know Ken Theodorsen, a sound engineer at Disc Lab studio, Oslo in early 1994. Ken was a well-known character in the Tromsø electronic music scene, and had occasionally appeared as a live band-member on stage with Illumination in select live performances and rave events, as well as releasing a number of his own singles on Beatservice Records, as “Theory”.

Their one and only EP “Two Lights” was released on 12” vinyl in early 1997. 

A thunderous slice of Norwegian electronica, exclusively licensed from +47 to Music Man records in Belgium. The “Two Lights” EP included two A-side tracks “Lux Perpetua”, and “Union”, as well as a seminal remix of “Union” from Detroit techno legend Stacey Pullen, on the B-side. This was probably the one and only time a track from the so-called “Arctic” Norwegian electronic music scene was given a direct “Detroit” answer-back, and remix translation.

On Midsummer’s Eve 1997, Ultraviolet performed at a bizarre, soon-to-become legendary event in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Playing together on a line-up with “Biosphere” (aka Geir Jenssen), Ultraviolet’s live-set was broadcast as a live, pan-European EBU radio event, with several UK glossy media present.

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At this showcase event, deep in the heart of the Arctic, Ultraviolet presented several new, unreleased tracks to a baying crowd of drunk locals, and drugged-up lifestyle journalists, who were all there on an exotic junket to allegedly experience the “ambient/techno scene".

The resulting media attention gave Ultraviolet a somewhat unnerving amount of UK record company interest, contractual dilemmas, and false hopes. Nicholas and Ken, somewhat disheartened by it all, decided to then pull the plug on “Ultraviolet”, leaving an album’s worth of unreleased material lost in the +47 archives, to this day.

In late 1997, Ultraviolet provided a specially-composed soundtrack for an experimental Norwegian dance film “Exit” (directed by Anette Haraldsen), with the resulting track later appearing on a Beatservice compilation “Arctic Circles 2” in 1999, licensed from +47.

Stacey Pullen’s remix of “Union” was also included in the compilation CD “FBU: Recollections In Rare Altitude”, curated by Nicholas Sillitoe and Per Martinsen on their joint +47/LoveOD release in 1998.

In 2003, Nicholas Sillitoe and Ken Theodorsen joined forces once again with Norwegian vocalist Anne Marie Almedal, collaborating as producers under the collective guise “AM & The UV”, re-enacting the abbreviated Ultraviolet name for further sonic adventures.

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Photo: VHS/Still image - Ultraviolet: Live in Svalbard (MTV).