Junior

Röyksopp

Emi 2009

Röyksopp offers electronic chillout music and hit the ground running some eight years with Melody AM which was followed by Understanding. Röyksopp has certainly been working hard as Junior will be followed by a further recording, Senior, in a short time.

Junior combines the witty, fun and catchiness of the melodies they are noted for with all manner of synth led music bringing together electronic, funky, dance and more.

While they have written, performed, arranged, mixed and produced the album it also features guest vocals from the likes of Lykke Li, Robyn and Karin Dreijer-Andersson (of The Knife).

The album opens with Happy Up Here which is a very catchy little dance number, it is funky, fun and even a bit trippy.

The next track is The Girl And The Robot featuring the voice of Robyn, it is a top notch dance disco track, it is a superb Diva number which will have the feet moving !

Long-time Röyksopp collaborator, Anneli Drecker, is next in a superb track which forges her falsetto onto a strangely warped yet resonant electronic loop which develops into a great piece of electronica.

This Must Be It and Miss It So Much continue the synth dance sound with great vocals. There are clearly a lot of hits on this album.

Royksopp Forever is a rather cool change of place, offering a relaxed chilled sound which gives us a nice breathing space between the dance numbers !

The album continues meandering through electro and dance offering all sorts of interesting riffs and explorations, there are lots of hooks here which will stick in your mind a long time after you play it.

Brundtland and Berge really know their stuff; they create music that sounds so easy, so laid back and yet is really so textured and complex. It is very difficult to make music that sounds smooth and simple yet underneath is complex and well crafted. They have succeeded admirably and this is only the first of two albums this year.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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