Senior

A proggy companion to last year’s pop-glazed Junior, Royksopp’s fourth album is all about the quiet moments (the band’s Svein Berge has described it as “the senile sibling... who lives in the attic”). Where its little brother popped at the seams with celebrity cameos (Robyn, Lykke Li, The Knife’s Karin Andersson) and glistering beats, Senior unfolds in a series of untethered ambient instrumentals, punctuated with whale-song bass lines and icy fragments of guitar. In isolation, tracks such as ‘...And The Forest Began To Sing’ or ‘Tricky Two’ can feel like a random coagulation of new agey tempos and acoustic meanderings. Cumulatively, though, the record has hypnotic qualities, as well as genuinely creepy passages (‘The Fear’), that might have felt at home on the soundtrack to a ‘70s John Carpenter movie (according to Berge, The Field-esque ‘The Alcoholic’ is told from the viewpoint of a homicidal hobo). The result: a chill-out album you’ll feel happier listening to with the lights on.