Royksopp - The Understanding

[DudeAsInCool]

Royksopp

The Understanding

(Astralwerks)

Club bangers for the chill-out room.

At the beginning of the decade, dance music got downsized. You can, in part, thank Royksopp for this. The Bergen, Norway duo's late 2001 debut, Melody A.M.., hit at a point when bruisers like Paul Oakenfold were beginning to feel like relics of the dot-com-bubble era, and simpler styles, from mash-ups to electroclash to microhouse, were staging an aesthetic takeover. Straddling the line between arena trance and the new minimalism, the album established a middle ground with the single "Eple," a kind of techno-Coldplay track that could soundtrack a Mitsubishi ad.

...Now, with the heaving broken beat of "49 Percent" and the layers of grinding percussion on the Chemical Brothers-ish "Alpha Male" (note title), The Understanding finds Royksopp intentionally aiming for the superclubs instead of just happening upon them. But their harder sound is still offset by softer edges: "49 Percent" features the wimp-soul of Chelonis R. Jones, of the great Berlin tech-house label Get Physical, and "Circuit Breaker" is tempered by the limpid vocoder twang of Kate Havnevik, who joins Royksopp frontmen Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland on vocals.

http://www.spinmag.com/reviews/magazine/20.../0508_royksopp/

[Malicious Intent]

Love these guys :D