The swedish Johan Linus Eklöw has been experimenting with all genres of music since his teenage years – Ranging from choirs to jazz – But the electronic-sided Style of Eye pseudonym only came in the 2000s.

He explains it all in an interview with Lauren Engel of Sidewalk Talk, where Eklöw also tells a little about his story with trip-hop and being the school’s DJ:

I liked to listen to instrumental hip-hop stuff, they called it trip-hop […] And I started to dig deeper and really look into where the samples came from.

We have a pretty cool setup in Sweden where there’s these kind of community houses […] But everybody can go there and there’s always a big disco at every weekend […]

His trip-hop music taste ended up blending together with techno when he listened to Plastikman’s albums, which in turn came as a motivation to create Style of Eye.

For over a decade, he made a name for himself in the electronic dance music community, with countless records released across renowned imprints such as OWSLA, Refune and Ultra. Meanwhile, his connections grew bigger and bigger, and Linus saw himself writing and producing songs with the likes of Icona Pop, Rebecca & Fiona, and Tom Staar.

By 2012, Eklöw put the Style of Eye persona on hold to team up with Christian Karlsson:

We share the same type of energy, and when you find someone like that in the studio it’s very easy to have fun, to make something, something that really feels special to you.

We felt the urge to fill the dance world up with songs and with songwriting that created our sound.

Being friends and co-producing songs together for a while, it was only natural the partnership transformed into something bigger, and their peak came in the form of Galantis. The self-titled debut EP was such a huge success that the duo saw themselves performing live for the first time at Coachella, of all places.

Nowadays, Linus is still credited for songs outside of the Galantis world, most notably for artists like Adam Lambert and Noonie Bao, but the focus remains on Galantis.