Royksopp Gets Meta About Music
posted in: Artist Features
Welcome to the second installment of Sets and the City, your go-to source for live music coverage in NYC. Weather in the Northeast has been a bit harsh this season and the present winter wonderland is no exception. Unfortunately, the serene scene from my window is the brute behind White Lies’ concert cancellation. Scheduled to perform Thursday at Highline Ballroom, they were instead stranded in California. They’re supposedly planning an appearance here sometime in spring, but, nevertheless, this avid fan was crushed. In lieu of the planned coverage, here’s a brief profile of Norwegian electronic twosome Rí¶yksopp based on a recent phone interview with Torbjí¸rn Brundtland. Sure, it’s not a technical set, but fear not, they’ll be in North America for a little live action come March.
Comprising Torbjí¸rn Brundtland and Svein Berge, the ever-revved Rí¶yksopp dropped their fourth full-length, Senior, in October and return to the US in March for a modest tour. Why so limited? It’s all we have time for between our lives and work on the next album, explains Brundtland matter-of-factly. We don’t want to take too long a break.
It’s safe to say the subject of the band’s name has been exhausted over the course of their dozen-year audible relationship. Still, I wanted to hear more from the horse’s mouth myself. We had doubts in the beginning whether to keep [Rí¶yksopp]. It’s an impossible name, a name that’s too much. Mark Jones and the folks over at London-based indie label Wall of Sound ¦said it reminded them of an imaginary place somewhere in the Far North. In short, It’s kind of poetic; Music as a place you travel to in your mind when you listen to it.
Brundtland’s summation of their collective moniker certainly informs the way in which he describes their latest work. Both the purely instrumental Senior and its companion album Junior, a romp of a record with several vocal guest stars, were recorded simultaneously; The processes were intertwined, he tells me, though Junior hit shelves a year prior, in October 2009. The two are intended to convey opposite ends of the Rí¶yksopp spectrum. [Senior] is not so much humor and smile. It’s a bit twisted. It’s music you allow to flow into you. It doesn’t force itself anywhere. [Junior] is loud and instant. Your spirits are raised. It’s true; consider Senior Living, an ominous number that gradually builds and develops, alongside giggling-go-lucky Happy Up Here. It’s clear they’re revealing”and balancing”dual personas.
If Junior is an album for youth, he continues, Senior is an album for people who are elderly in their minds. We’ve always been old people inside our heads, ever since we were kids. We were kids, too, playing and laughing at silly things. [But] we always had this longing for philosophy and understanding and abstractions that tend to come when you’re older. Old souls, it would seem. Brundtland drives home an important point: There’s room in our lives to enjoy both things. To us, it’s very natural to have two sides.
On the topic of recording, I ask Brundtland about the track-completing process, how they know when something’s done. He offers up two schools of thought; If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, versus The perfectionist approach. For them, he says, I think we are perfectionists. But it’s not technical; it’s more emotional. We are emotional perfectionists. If [a song] doesn’t feel right, we do something about it. When it feels right to us, we know it’s complete. We allow things to be dirty and gritty and not technically perfect, as long as it serves a purpose.
As for the forthcoming record hinted at earlier, Brundtland tells me it may be a bit before we get a bite. Whenever we have an idea, the only appropriate way to go about realizing [it] is to be very meticulous and not use any preset formulas, sounds or solutions. We have to find our own way. It seems we are destined to take our time. I ask if fans can anticipate similar lyric-slinging Swedes again, as with Junior‘s pop princess lineup (Robyn, Lykke Li, Karin Dreijer Andersson, etc.): You can expect it, Brundtland promises. You might be disappointed of course.