Day 367: Röyksopp – Melody AM

‍Today, it’s again time to plug up a big fat hole in my music knowledge, and this time it’s in the shape of a Norwegian electronic music duo called Röyksopp. I think as a music appreciator from the Nordics, I had some sort of a contractual obligation to get acquainted with them that I failed to fulfil in my formative years. Röyksopp and I unfortunately passed each other like ships in the night, but today, it’s finally time.

Album cover courtesy of Wall of Sound

Röyksopp was formed in Tromsø in 1998 by childhood friends Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland. They were both interested in electronic music when they were in their early teens, and they bought a synthesiser and started making music together some months after they met. They became a part of the techno scene and were part of an ambient techno group called Aedena Cycle, but the group disbanded and a few years later, Berge and Brundtland went on to form Röyksopp.

Their debut album Melody AM was released in 2001 after they were signed by the UK label Wall of Sound, who wooed them by having their head A&R guy fly Banksy to Bergen to do art – they had a few labels courting them, but the tactic worked, with Svein saying “you have to take into consideration that we are two simpletons from north Norway and we are easily impressed by those things. I guess that was it.” It reached the top of the albums chart in Norway and reached number nine in the UK, and has since become a bit of a modern classic.

If I am 100% honest, at the risk of sounding like a hater, I had negative connotations associated with Röyksopp. It just always struck me as hipster music, made by hipsters for hipsters. Maybe that was an opinion that came from meeting an annoying Röyksopp fan in my formative years, I don’t know, but it was just never something I was interested in. But begrudgingly I do have to say that this is actually pretty good.

Melody AM is a little bit strange, which is what makes it so enjoyable – it’s simultaneously warm and melancholic and almost happy and sad-sounding at the same time, and there’s something about the slight uneasiness from the juxtaposition that makes it fun to listen to. And it’s one of those albums that are hard to categorise, maybe downtempo or ambient or chillout, but also not really neatly any of that either, it’s just its own thing.

It’s another reluctant addition to my ongoing series called Unfortunately the Hipsters Were Right, I liked it. Melody AM gets an 8.5/10.