Music
28 Nov 14

The End Is Wry - Hot Press meets Royskopp

For their very last album, Nordic electro duo Röyksopp have assembled a collection of bitter-sweet dance dirges. They talk about turning their backs on the long-play format – and their unlikely get-together with Benedict Cumberbatch.

Taylor Swift may beg to differ but, for the 99% of artists unlikely to shift a million copies of their new record the week of its release, it feels safe to proclaim the album a dying art form: a mortally weakened institution slouching towards inevitable irrelevance.

That was certainly the conclusion Norwegian production duo Röyksopp came to working on their latest long-play collection, The Inevitable End: about halfway through the process it dawned on them this was probably the last proper album they would ever release.
Rather than getting Röyksopp down, the realisation struck the pair as in some ways a cause for optimism. The future was rushing ever closer – better to embrace it than hold on to old certainties and end up steamrolled. What had they to lose trying something new?
“Very few people find the time to listen to an album from beginning to end nowadays,” says the duo’s Svein Berge. “Sitting down, putting on a record – we just don’t do it anymore. At least not where new music is concerned. I’m sure people still listen to their Pink Floyd records. Stuff that’s just come out? I don’t think so.”
That isn’t the only reason Röyksopp have decided to call it quits as an album act (they will continue to record and tour). After five long-players, the ritual of assembling a dozen or so thematically coherent songs every two years no longer appeals. They’ve been there, done that – over and over (and over). It was time to find new challenges. Were they to grow bored with the process of creating music, what hope of connecting with their audience?
“We’ve toyed with the idea of releasing in different formats for some time,” says Berge. “We’ve grown more interested in concepts and not all of these are necessarily albums. We might want to do something shorter than an album – or even longer. What we don’t want to do is make 12 tracks purely to fill out an LP. That holds no interest.”
Among the guest vocalists on The Inevitable End is Swedish clubland chanteuse Robyn. She and Röyksopp are long-term collaborators, having toured and recorded an EP together last year. Röyksopp relish the immediacy Robyn brings, her way of imbuing what on the page reads like a throwaway pop moment with vim and foreboding.
“We are looking for vocalists with strong personalities who are awesome in their own right. When we work together, you hope to combine the best of what we do and the best of what they do.”
Sensing it would be their last conventional hurrah, Röyksopp put their heart and soul into The Inevitable End. The album spills over with emotion and represents quite a break from slick 2000s hits such as ‘Eple’ and ‘What Else Is There’ – catchy dancefloor anthems you know even if you think you don’t.
Older and perhaps wiser (they’ll get back to you on that), in their late thirties the record finds Röyksopp grappling with early middle-age and all that it brings: the worries as parents grow older, the sense of personal horizons narrowing, the pressures of relationships and parenthood. It’s all in there, should you wish to delve deep enough.
“As you age, it is natural for you to ruminate on mortality,” says Berge. “At times it can be hard to be human – that is something we touch on.”
This statement is not informed by any personal melodrama, he insists. Certainly nothing that will strike listeners as grotesque or unusual. No, Röyksopp were merely channeling the feeling that life grows sadder as the years ebb by and the gulf between the person you are and the person you want to be widens to the point where it is unbridgeable.
“It’s a reflective record,” Berge shrugs. “It felt like the right moment in our lives to complete a project such as this.”
At the risk of veering all over the map, we have to ask Röyksopp about the bizarre conclusion to their 2013 Late Night Tales DJ compilation. After an agreeable 90 minutes of nu-gaze electronica and cinematic bleeps, it finishes with a bizarre and hard to follow spoken word piece from the world’s favorite odd-looking movie star, Benedict Cumberbatch. What, we have to ask, is Sherlock Holmes doing on a Röyksopp compilation?
“Actually, he is reading a short story that appeared across several Late Night Tales,” says Berge. “The idea did not originate with us. It is part of a wider concept. The piece is puzzling but we like it. While the stuff he talks about is strange, it fits for some reason. We’re glad it is there.”