Junior

The third release from Air-ish Norwegian duo Royksopp is basically Melody P.M. – occasionally hard-edged, pulsing, electronic music, but still dark and techno enough to definitely be a night-time affair. There’s apparently a more downbeat, introspective companion album called Senior coming out later this year, but Junior opens cheerfully enough with the squelchily upbeat ‘Happy Up Here’.
When they weren’t knob-twiddling themselves, Svein Berge and Tobjorn Brundtland invited some females into the studio, and Junior features guest vocals from the likes of Scandinavian starlets Lykke Li and Robyn (who sings on hectic forthcoming single ‘The Girl And The Robot’), Norwegian singer Anneli Drecker and The Knife frontwoman Karin Dreijer Andersson. The results are always interesting, and occasionally brilliant. Andersson’s heavily accented singing on ‘Tricky Tricky’ is a real highlight.
All told, it’s a slickly produced, kind of groovy, multi-layered hybrid of Royksopp’s million-selling debut Melody A.M. and its slightly less understood follow-up The Understanding. It’s all vaguely soulless and lacks heart, but that may well be the point in the year 2009.

KEY TRACK: ‘IT’S WHAT I WANT’