Royksopp - Electronic funksters from Norway

Tromso, Norway, is a small town within the Arctic Circle with no more than 60,000 inhabitants. A landscape of ice, wooden houses and northern lights. Not exactly what you'd expect from one of the most vibrant musical scenes of recent years. This is where Bel Canto and Biosphere were born, masters of a peculiar, synthetic and atmospheric pop. And this is also where Royksopp took their first steps, a very young band that burst onto the scene with their debut album, Melody A.M.: a mix of cross-genre, manipulated sounds, poised between sinuous dance rhythms and seductive lounge music atmospheres. From the "chill-out" of "Royksopp's Night Out" to the jazz flourishes of "She's so", from the catchy melodies of "Eple" and "Remind Me" to the evocative trip-hop of "Sparks", it's a parade of intriguing, sophisticated sounds that reveal a distinct knack for manipulation and the most seductive side of electronic music. There's no shortage of curious samples either, as in "So Easy", which uses the melodic line and some fragments from a song by a Swedish easy-listening band of the Sixties, as well as glimpses of Bacharach.

"Maybe in Tromso we all feel a bit isolated from the rest of the world," says Svein Berge, who together with Torbjorn Brundtland makes up this eccentric duo of electronic funksters. "Only a couple of bridges connect us to the mainland, and the nearest city is five hours away by car. We can't hang out at the trendy clubs you find in big cities, so we're forced to invent something to beat the boredom." And yet Royksopp's formula is an alchemy of remarkably contemporary sounds, almost a soundtrack for the new century: icy electronic breezes, melodic games, trip-hop pulses, jazzy atmospheres. All of it underpinned by a funk soul, albeit transplanted into a distinctly Nordic setting. And it's precisely this balance between "warm" and "cold" sounds that is one of Royksopp's hallmarks. "With a bit of presumption, I'd say our roots lie in ambient music," says Berge. "As we grew, we veered toward 'house' sounds. More bass and drums, basically. It gets really cold in Tromso, so we felt the need to warm ourselves up a little with some African-American rhythms."

In Röyksopp's blender there's room for the most disparate influences: "The obvious reference points are Kraftwerk and Brian Eno, who represent our electronic side. But we also love Giorgio Moroder's disco, Art of Noise's use of the sampler, and the simple yet dramatic harmonies of early Vangelis. When describing our music, we like to say it combines cinematic harmonies, Erik Satie and the melodies of Francis Lai (the composer of the soundtrack to "Un homme et une femme", ed.) with the warmth of Seventies analogue gear, Eighties pomp, and programming."

Röyksopp's story began almost as a game. Svein Berge and Torbjorn Brundtland, both computer enthusiasts, met at school and started dreaming up strange experiments halfway between music and electronics. "We bought our first synthesizer when we were 14, it was just a hobby, we liked manipulating 'ambient' themes. Then we made our first demo, in the early Nineties. So we decided to form Röyksopp." The name they chose is a Norwegian pun, essentially untranslatable. "Röyksopp, in our language, means many things. Translated into English, it could be equivalent to 'puff ball', one of those mushrooms that grow on the ground and burst if you step on them. Another meaning is the cloud of smoke that follows a nuclear explosion."

The two electronic funksters from Tromso soon discovered that making music was a lot more fun than university. "We were taking English language courses. Music was just a hobby. Then it became something bigger than we expected. And so..." The duo's first fan was none other than fellow townsman Geir Jenssen of Biosphere, who put them in touch with the entourage of Apollo (the prestigious ambient music label) and had Aedena Cycle produce their "Travellers Dream" (1995). After a couple of outings on the Norwegian label Tellé (also home to Erot, Bjorn Torske, Kings Of Convenience and Annie), the duo was noticed by Wall Of Sound, which signed them and released the single "Epple", steeped in a refined "chill-lounge" sound. It was the prelude to Röyksopp's debut album, Melody A.M., which entered the independent charts and won over critics even outside Norway's borders. "Sleaze Nation" named it "album of the year". "The Face" wrote that Röyksopp "have discovered a way to travel into the human mind: a warm, enveloping journey."

The Norwegian band has already played in Britain, Germany and Belgium. "We'd love to come to Italy too, but so far it hasn't been possible," they explain. Their setup consists of complex electronic gadgetry, but also old-fashioned keyboards. "We prefer the old keyboards," says Berge, "because they let you manipulate sounds more easily and invent new ones. Plus they're much 'warmer' than the new ones, which have a digital electronics that can sound a bit sterile at times." Tireless recyclers of sound, Röyksopp don't shy away from using samples. But in moderation. "In 'So easy', one of the tracks on the album, we used the melodic line and some fragments from a song by a Swedish easy-listening band of the Sixties. We also took something from a Bacharach piece. Apart from that, we generally try to use whole song samples as little as possible, we prefer to work on the sounds themselves."

There's something pioneering and DIY about Röyksopp's approach. That taste for bizarre experiments goes back to their school days and even carries over into their live shows. "Electronic music, live, risks becoming boring," says Svein. "We wanted people to have fun at our shows, so we thought about fitting all our instruments inside one huge box." Come again? "Exactly that, a huge metal contraption weighing over 100 kilos, five metres long and almost two metres high. We put all our instruments and electronic equipment inside it. There's a door in the box, so we have the chance to play from both inside and outside it. It looks a bit like a caravan, with a chimney puffing out smoke." As if to reaffirm that imagination is never in short supply in Tromso.

"Only This Moment": a languid summer of sweet harmonies, a summer of colours, a carefree summer, a radio summer playing sun-scorched songs that echo faintly into the night. It's the single from The Understanding (2005), a summery record that captures in 12 moments the alchemical chiaroscuro of seaside photos retouched on a laptop.

Carrying the weight of an album like Melody A.M. on their shoulders, with its nearly one million copies sold, the temptation to remake the same album could be just as strong as the urge to schizophrenically distance themselves from it; instead Röyksopp solve the puzzle with the skill of seasoned musicians, freeing themselves from cumbersome expectations without losing an indie boldness perfectly at ease in the fine salons of the mainstream. The band veers toward songcraft, but does so by embracing far milder climates, effectively updating the aesthetic of europop, a genre that has always had its finest exponents in the Scandinavian school.

The Understanding is a meeting point between fragrant instrumental symphonies (the synthesizer waltz "Triumphant", which opens the album), or tense nocturnal progressions (another superb instrumental, the mini suite "Alpha Male"), and explosive, beach-ready clatter, whether that of "Follow My Ruin", a dance-pop gem that Bryan Ferry hasn't written in almost twenty years, or of "49 Percent", a song with a black soul and house leanings performed by Chelonis R Jones of the Get Physical stable.

Aside from the ecstatic and crystalline "What Else Is There?", sung by a sensual Karin Dreijer of Sweden's Knife, what truly surprises are the voices of Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge, who take on the remaining vocal parts with results that are nothing short of brilliant, without resorting to cool guest names, as was the case with Erlend Øye of Kings Of Convenience on the previous album. From the windswept seafront comes the melancholy, enchanted solitude of "A Beautiful Day Without You", whose half-whispered synth-pop, heart-wrenching as it is, reaches heights of melodicism that would make masters Pet Shop Boys envious, while the strobe lights of an open-air disco keep us up at night with cascading waves of sinuous rhythm and ever-rising bpm in "Circuit Breaker", whose female vocal counterpoint sticks with you (the supporting voice belongs to Kate Havnevik, who also lends it to "Only This Moment"). While "Someone Like Me" may recall the familiar atmospheres of Air's "Talkie Walkie", managing to escape the impasse by veering into the most refined of funk, it's the swaying, dreamlike, starlit night that bequeaths us the closing tracks "Dead To The World" and "Tristesse Globale", a fitting exit for a waking dream.

Röyksopp's Night Out (2006) is a live EP recorded during the Oslo date of the band's 2005 tour.

The third full-length effort, Junior (2009), moves even further toward forms geared for mass appeal, radio-friendly taste or dancefloor pleasure. The distance from the atmospheric landscapes of the debut album is, perhaps paradoxically, reduced, due to echoes of familiar sounds and the odd instrumental passage, but the heart of the record beats elsewhere.

Junior has an increasingly European sound: take for example the lead single, that candy-coated little carousel ride called "Happy Up Here", which injects the Norwegians' classic structure with a hefty dose of Astralwerks-branded playfulness and splashes of french touch. The alluring edges of "The Girl And The Robot" bring to the dancefloor an almost synth-pop contrast against the violin's romantic flourishes, while the delicate carousel of crumpled electronics on "Vision One" captures Röyksopp's evolution as well as anything could.

The duo's skillful hands clearly have no shortage of color sense: what fails to fully convince, though, is their real ability to breathe a soul into this expressive form. The best moments, in fact, come when they simply let the sound speak for itself. That means the tracks' outros, or even more so, the instrumental flight of fancy that is "Röyksopp Forever", whose string surges unload all of the duo's romantic instincts.

So perhaps the best track here is a kind of b-side to "The Understanding" — a dreamy electro-pop ballad, "You Don't Have a Clue". For the most part, the album just coasts along the line of pleasantness (the other instrumental, "Silver Cruiser", the divertissement "Miss It So Much"), occasionally stepping a bit above it ("This Must Be It"), at other times dipping below ("True To Life"). The only track that breaks the mold is "Tricky Tricky", an obsessive nightmare rightly entrusted — once again — to the voice of Karin Dreijer of The Knife.

All things considered, it's hard to deny that the progression of the Röyksopp entity hits an abrupt brake, forging a sound that fails to revive past glories, let alone recent ones.

The follow-up to Junior, titled Senior (2010), is described in press releases as a dark, shadowy work, entirely instrumental and quite introspective. But if the Norwegian duo's goal was to forge a dark side to the infectious joy that permeated the previous record, well, the operation can be considered a complete failure.

Senior is a sequel that, ironically, is born old, already heard before. Nine dead-flat pieces, resting on indietronic dirges that flirt with subdued ambient and occasional field recordings. Flashes like the excellent "Senior Living" — a bored spirit, detached nocturnal drowsiness in a jewel of desert-like languor — aren't enough to lift three quarters of an hour of concentrated boredom.

"The Drug", with its minimal, repeated kick drum, casts a bit of a spell, and maybe that gives us the exact measure of Senior's substance. But the record never truly takes off. "The Fear" and "Forsaken Cowboy" try to sound à-la Air, but miss the mark, "Tricky Two" is a rambling, aimless progression, and "Coming Home" is a harmless ambient expanse in the Morr Music mold.

A record born under a bad star that leaves a bitter aftertaste. A dry well for Svein and Torbjørn. But there remains hope that they still have much to give.

In 2014, the waters start moving again (or perhaps it's more accurate to say churning). Together with Swedish artist Robyn comes Do It Again, an EP of just 5 tracks, but well structured enough to create the right atmosphere while staying concise and accessible. The sound is layered, but strikes the right balance between catchy disco-pop moments, techno and ambient. The "excuse" is that the trio is touring that same summer, and Do It Again gives them 5 new tracks to pull out during the shows. What's funny, though, is that the result far surpasses what each act has delivered individually in recent years.

Take the dazzling "Do It Again", a supremely sticky electro-pop number all glitter and mirror ball with the potential to keep us entertained all summer long (and if it's not quite the new "Dancing On My Own", it comes pretty close). Or the clearer "Every Little Thing", a squared-off Nordic synth-pop track that doesn't lack emotional tension thanks to its vocalist. Or again the compelling "Sayit", a pitch-black, robotic trance ride accompanied by an equally striking H&M ad spot video.

The opener "Monument", on the other hand, is a true monolith, with a pensive stride and a chord progression reminiscent of Madonna's "Get Together" by Madonna, but closes with a noir-jazz coda reminiscent of that other wonderful Scandinavian sprite, Stina Nordenstam.

The closing track is entrusted to the airy ambient-drone expanses of "Inside The Idle Hour Club", which seems placed there specifically to let the mind rest after a night of dancing, setting it down on a fjord to watch the sunrise with tears in its eyes.

Do It Again works better than ever. Robyn brings her own highly personal art-pop touch, giving new life to the music of the Tromsø duo after their last few albums went largely unnoticed. Röyksopp, for their part, build a powerful and cohesive sonic framework, at times genuinely moving, but also able to temper and bring order to the blonde vocalist's not-always-focused ideas.

Quite the comeback, the perfect crime: intensity made accessible.

With the following The Inevitable End, the pair deliver their final work, closing out their recording career "with the conventional concept of the album", to use their own enigmatic words.

Having now definitively left behind the evocative hyperborean watercolours with which we first knew and applauded them, somewhere between a light-footed, carefree ambient and the downtempo of the best Air, the duo now seem too (and definitively) seduced by playful, radio-friendly synth-pop to leave any room for their dreamier Nordic reveries.

The album opens with the rigid beats of “Skulls”, a track that acts as a genuine invitation to hit the dance floor, and with the electric lines of “Monument”, already featured on “Do It Again” and reworked for this new release. The sparkling nuances persist through the sweet choruses of “Save Me” – accompanied by the crystal-clear vocals of Susanne Sundfør – in the irreverent nursery-rhyme “Rong”, but above all in the massive house stomp of “I Had This Thing”, undoubtedly the most powerful track on the whole record, sung by the Jamie “Irrepressible” we came to know last year through the gem “Something in My Heart”.

While they keep pressing on undaunted along the Moroder-esque path (“Running To The Sea”), Berge and Brundtland also allow themselves a few nostalgic dives into the past, dusting off their signature light melodies on “Sordid Affair” and “You Know I Have To Go”. Generally speaking, in the last part of the record the crisp drum machine beats give way to hazier atmospheres, with the tempo finally slowing down in the closing triptych made up of the languid journey of “Compulsion” – a true whisper that gently fades away – the instrumental “Coup de Grace”, and the melancholy farewell “Thank You”.

The good old days of Melody AM are now definitively gone, and the most devoted fans might turn up their noses. We should consider, though, that Röyksopp have always shown great mastery in handling their quirky retro synthesizers, and this record is no exception. All things considered, then, it's not a question of calling this album good or bad, but rather of recognising a work perfectly in line with the latest stylistic path taken by the duo, the result of a sincere wish to close out a chapter of their discography.

Will the EP format turn out to be the one that best represents the spirit of the Norwegian duo? Who knows. For now, it's enough that they keep doing what they do best: entertain.

2014's The Inevitable End seemed to have brought the story of Röyksopp to a close for good, or at least their discography – since in the following years the celebrated duo from Bergen, Norway, would only put out the occasional single or remix pulled out of the vault. So when, after eight years of recording silence, Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland announced that a new album of theirs would see the light last April, plenty of Nordic electronic music fans jumped out of their seats.

The undertaking was indeed risky: dusting off a name that had literally defined the early 2000s with its buoyant melodies, its enveloping downtempo beats and its iconic featuring spots with the very best Scandinavian vocalists. A project that set a trend, but one that had never quite managed to maintain the truly peak level of a stunning debut (the 2001 masterpiece Melody A.M.) and an absolutely top-tier follow-up (2005's The Understanding), and which had also gone through some conspicuous dips in inspiration (2010's Senior) and, in part, what we believed to be their farewell (the aforementioned The Inevitable End).

That things were in good shape, and were anything but improvised or a mere dip into nostalgia, became clear right from the release of the first singles – which are also the tracks that, after a brief introduction, kick off Profound Mysteries, the Norwegians' sixth album. First an instrumental titled “The Ladder”, hypnotic and fairy-tale-like, which unleashes crackling basslines amid spiralling synth textures, then a flirtatious, rhythmic “Impossible” featuring guest star Alison Goldfrapp launching her dance-ready coos into the ether – both made it immediately clear that the magic was still in the hands and on the knobs of Svein and Torbjørn.

The uptempo number, admittedly a bit boisterous, is the unrestrained “This Time, This Place”, entrusted to the voice of Beki Mari; while the following “How The Flowers Grow” with Pixx and “If You Want Me” with Susanne Sundfør firmly slow the pace down. The latter is a lesson in restraint, in which Röyksopp's delicate electronic architecture brings out the full evocative power of the Norwegian vocalist.

“There, Beyond The Trees” temporarily sets the guest vocalists aside and finds the duo tackling a mysterious piece that brushes up against both ambient and the Nordic nightmares of the Knife.

Sung with cheeky flair by Astrid S, the effervescent “Breathe” will delight anyone nostalgic for Melody A.M., and especially for “Eple”.

Despite the excellent spring-time premise, few could have imagined that the Norwegian duo's creative thaw would herald the arrival of an avalanche of music for electronic fans everywhere. Indeed, not long after the release of Profound Mysteries, Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland revealed their intention to release as many as three albums in 2022. All sharing the same title, the records aim, in the eyes of their creators, to represent “an expanded creative universe and a prodigious conceptual project”. The idea is not to limit the listening experience to mere passive consumption, but to pair each individual track with a short film commissioned from a Scandinavian production house. In their view, the resulting multisensory experience could stimulate those deeply mysterious zones that belong to the realm of imagination and the unconscious.

In any case, not even the second instalment of this work strays far from the stylistic hallmarks that have always defined Röyksopp. The opener is the excellent “Denimclad Baboons”. Buoyed by sparkling synth-pop and a cheerful, driving mood, the track plays a lot with atmosphere and contrasts nicely with the hypnotic, dreamlike rhythms of the previous record's intro. The following “Let's Get It Right” has a dance structure with a funky sheen that could almost pass as a tribute to the art of Daft Punk. This song also features Astrid S, the first of the many guest stars Röyksopp invited to help make this new effort. As ever thoroughly successful is the collaboration with Susanne Sundfør, who appears no fewer than twice on this summer instalment of “Profound Mysteries”. Particularly worth noting is the Norwegian singer's performance on “Tell Him”, which blends perfectly with the string sample and the emotionally charged lyrics. The album also makes room for a collaboration with British artist Pixx, who lends her voice to “It Was A Good Thing”. The song introduces the soft ambient atmospheres that define the second half of the album, and stands as its finest example. The Nordic masters skilfully work the synth knobs, recreating the effect of water droplets and building an immaculate, velvety sound.

Unfortunately, “Profound Mysteries II” doesn't always maintain an adequate level of inspiration. A good half of the tracks come across as repetitive and fail to truly engage. “Unity” and “Remembering The Departed” are genuinely underwhelming; “Sorry” rests entirely on the vocal talents of Jamie Irrepressible but never really takes off. Nor does the more energetic “Control” fare any better, reusing parts of Adamski and Seal's “Killer” while only making one long for the original. Ultimately, comparing the strengths of the first two instalments, it's clear that Röyksopp didn't have enough material to fill two albums. Trimming the fat would have maximised the result. But it's still too early to judge the work as a whole. What's certain is that, taken together, the first two Profound Mysteries records don't add anything new to the aesthetic Röyksopp have displayed throughout their career, but they do manage to electrify thanks to numerous moments that wouldn't have looked out of place on their finest work.

With the trilogy closed out by the release of its final chapter, Profound Mysteries, and its ambient reworking Nebulous Nights filed away, Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland return in 2025 with a new album reinterpreting their own material, this time aimed at capturing the essence of their live show.

True Electric, which takes its name from the title of their tour, gathers remixes and reworkings of tracks spanning the duo's early days and recent past, aimed at pushing the dancefloor matrix at the heart of their live shows. It's an across-the-board process of manipulation, affecting both the surging electropop of "Impossible", sung by Alison Goldfrapp, and hazier, hypnotically-paced episodes like "The Ladder". Alongside the intensified beats comes a smoothing-out of the sound that, by the band's own stated intentions, aims to return to pure electronica — an approach that, however, often ends up draining the originals of their power. "The Girl And The Robot (ft. Robyn)" and "Breathe (ft. Astrid S)" are just two examples of how that virtuous balance between the synthetic and the emotional, which has always been the hallmark of the duo's most effective work, ends up missing here, while the fireworks-laden result found in the remake of "What Else Is There? (ft. Fever Ray)" is decidedly more convincing.

Ultimately there's more pain than pleasure here, and certainly nothing new to add to a catalogue that has always teetered between highs and lows. What shines through above all is the quality craftsmanship of the Berge/Brundtland partnership, though here it has the fault of being far too self-indulgent and prone to an excess of polish. We know for certain that new peaks are always possible. We'll keep waiting.

Contributions by Marco Bercella (“The Understanding”), Ciro Frattini (“Junior”), Alberto Asquini (“Senior”), Damiano Pandolfini (“Do It Again”), Alessandro Tozzi (“The Inevitable End”), Michele Corrado (“Profound Mysteries”), Fabio Ferrara (“Profound Mysteries II”), Peppe Trotta (“True Electric”)

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