Mr. Tophat

Stockholm resident Rudolf Nordström produces and DJs as Mr. Tophat, delivering an extensive catalog of relaxed house music both independently and through numerous partnerships. Multiple releases with Art Alfie sit alongside joint work involving Robyn and Kleerup, while the ambitious three-volume set Dusk to Dawn appeared in 2019.

Nordström started the label Junk Yard Connections before reaching age twenty, issuing its first record as the 2010 split single Highvalley/Feel with Adam Strömstedt. The following year he co-founded Karlovak with Art Alfie, whom he had met at a neighborhood club, and the pair fused house, disco, and techno across lengthy club performances plus a steady flow of singles on the label’s various outlets, among them KVKR, KRLVK, Karlovak Chrome, and the vinyl-only KVK, which concluded its run with KVK1000 in 2015.

Amid these projects Nordström still managed solo EPs, among them 2016’s A Memoir from the Youth, Pt. 1 on Public Possession and From Another Dimension on Music for Freaks. His collaborations with Robyn began with a 2016 reinterpretation of her 1999 single “Main Thing” for the RMX/RBN series and continued with the Trust Me EP, issued by Smalltown Supersound early in 2017. A Memoir from the Youth, Pt. 2 followed later that year. Only One, whose B-side “Legends” stretches to eighteen minutes, surfaced in September 2018. In 2019 Mr. Tophat delivered Dusk to Dawn, a wide-ranging album divided across three volumes that includes guest spots from Robyn, Kleerup, and Axel Boman.