Mysteries and longevity

Norwegian electro luminaries Röyksopp are back with their second album in a year, although they actually didn‘t want to release any regular albums anymore. But „Profound Mysteries II“is the second part of a much larger total work of art, consisting of music, videos and artwork, which not only changes the duo‘s approach to releases, but also shows Röyksopp musically more versatile than ever. We spoke to musicians Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge about their approach to production, their pragmatism when it comes to equipment, and how Google‘s DeepDream project inspired the visual side of “Profound Mysteries”, among other things.

Beat / “The Inevitable End” (2014) was supposed to be your last real album. With “Profound Mysteries” you even released two new albums within a few months. What made you change your mind?

Torbjørn / In general, what we tried to say, when we did promo for the album “The Inevitable End” was, that this is going to be the last traditional album. We felt that the album finished a story that began with our first album, “Melody A.M.”. We wanted to look for new ways of releasing music. After some time, we came up with this concept of “Profound Mysteries”. We never intended to stop making music.

Beat / “Profound Mysteries” is like a total work of art that combined albums, artworks and videos. I assume that was a much bigger challenge? Torbjørn / One might say so. It includes both abstract and very concrete visuals alongside the music. So yeah, it‘s a bigger amount of “content”. And obviously it is more work.

Beat / I guess there will be a third album as well since there are three circles in the artwork? Svein / Yeah, your assumptions are good, sir (laughs). It must also be said that the sheer amount of music that we‘ve made is beyond anything that we‘ve ever done before. Making it all sit together as a cohesive whole was also a great challenge. It shouldn‘t just be a collection of tracks, they needed to fit together. It‘s a somewhat holistic experience to listen to the music from start to end.

Beat / Was the production of the albums one big process?

Torbjørn / It‘s been a process where we worked on all parts simultaneously, deciding which track would belong where. The albums are made so that there are no “fillers”. All tracks have a purpose in relation to the song before and after, and also what part of the album series they are on.

Beat / The musical range is very wide. Was there a musical vision before you started to write? Torbjørn / Since we‘ve closed the chapter of traditional albums, we wanted to expand and show more of our musical influences. I think it‘s fair to say that this project is the most eclectic of them all. There‘s stuff that obviously lends itself to club music, but also tracks that are more acoustic singer-songwriter inspired. We just wanted to explore different inspirations.

Svein / It‘s also fair to say that the process of making music is very important to us. We think it‘s fun and we enjoy it a lot. Also, we trust the process very much. Sometimes the sound decides itself after we finished the melodies and the more traditional part of writing music. It‘s very process-oriented how the sound evolves. And sometimes we just let ourselves drift. It feels like the music wants to go in a certain direction. And we say, okay, let‘s go there.

Beat / Has your way of producing music has changed compared to previous albums?

Torbjørn / Yes and no. We still have the limitations that we used to have. For example, we still use a lot of analog equipment and the same synthesizers that we bought when we were kids. And in some ways it‘s also changed because the digital world has gotten so much better and faster, while the analog and acoustic part has stayed the same. Svein / Hopefully, we also picked up a trick or two. That made us better, or at least changed us. In terms of music production, I think whatever skills we had 20 years ago, we‘ve honed those skills.

Beat / Can we go a bit into detail how your setup looked like? Which instruments and effects have particularly influenced the ”Profound Mysteries” albums?

Torbjørn / First and foremost, we never had an impressive studio. Like when you open the door and all the analog equipment is neatly arranged on shelves with backlighting, so it looks impressi

ve. With us, it‘s more like we say, if it works, we‘re good to go. We don‘t have time to decorate, we just want to make music. There is lots of analog equipment scattered around. And there‘s a big desk with some computers that we sometimes swap out for other computers. But mainly we walk around playing different instruments, and then combine outboard gear with digital stuff. We just record what we play, and then we continue in the box.

Svein / I think you can say that we make music with a certain playfulness. We don‘t have all the analog equipment, especially the synths, hooked up at all times. They are stacked on top of each other and are lying in flight cases and so on. For example, I think to myself, today I feel like playing a polysix. Then I go to the flightcase, take out the Polysix and hook it up to use it for the next track. We have a certain circulation that doesn‘t follow a system. It always gives a fresh look at how we produce music.

Beat / Were there synthesizers or plugins that shape the sound of the albums a lot?

Torbjørn / We got the Big Sky reverb from Strymon. I think it‘s supposed to be a guitar pedal, but we used it on one of the Moogs. You can hear it on the second track of the first part, called “The Ladder”. It was refreshing to get our hands on something, which is semi affordable. You know, reverb units, that are great, also come with a great price tag. But this one really made our year. It’s not only affordable, but also easy to use. And it sounds so great!

Svein / We don‘t need things to be obscure. You know, using an edition from 1967 – that kind of stuff. If it sounds good, then it‘s fine for us. We don‘t have any snobbery when it comes to equipment. We don‘t care whether it‘s rare or not. I think the main thing with Röyksopp is that, although we think we have a unique sound, we don‘t really try to just make three different tracks. We try to make tracks that are as different as they can be. That‘s possibly also a reason why we switch between genres when we make music. If you compare 10 different Röyksopp tracks, they are very dissimilar in how they are shaped sonically. So there‘s no main synthesizer or instrument in our production that shines throughout.

Torbjørn / We don‘t make it easy for ourselves. It‘s about challenging ourselves. You often see people on YouTube who make electronic music always with the same setup. They can use it to create tracks very efficiently, but automatically they all have the same sound. That‘s one way of working. However, that‘s not how we do it. Our process is different, physically different. We always use different recording techniques and approach each track differently. It‘s a lot of extra work, but we believe it‘s the most honest way for us because we‘re striving for something that has an identity.

Svein / I think that provides longevity in terms of music. A rigid setup ties an album to a specific time span. Then it has no longevity. But we want our music to last longer than just a few weeks. That‘s why we keep swapping things around and messing up our equipment. It has to do with playfulness, it has to do with creating a unique sound for each track. Not for an album, but for each track.

Beat / In the credits, it says mixed and recorded by Röyksopp all over the world. What does it mean in detail? Did you travel a lot for this album? Torbjørn / Not necessarily for this album, but there are ideas in there and files that were recorded all over the world. Obviously, we work in the digital domain. Capturing ideas can happen just as easily in a hotel room in Berlin as while waiting at an airport in Tokyo. It might sound a bit pretentious, you can say that, because of course it didn‘t really originate all over the world, but only in certain parts of the world.

Svein / One can get quite philosophical around that. When do you create the music? Is it when you’re walking in the woods or in the streets, and you get that one line in your head? Or is it when you sit down in the studio in front of a computer and tie it all together? It‘s really hard to say. I feel like Torbjørn and I are making music all the time, or almost all the time.

Beat / How far back in time do the “Profound Mysteries“ideas go?

Svein / The oldest idea is the track “Unity”, which was made in the early 90s. I think it was in 1991. The idea was something we did when we were teenagers and we were really into the rave scene. But ‚90s rave club music has a clear stamp. So we refined it and made it what it is now. It‘s vintage MIDI. You just have to keep it under wraps for 30 years and then it‘ll be fine (laughs).

Beat / When do the singers come into play? Do you like to write songs with them, or do they get finished productions that they develop something to?

Svein / It differs. But most of the time, we have a performing artist in mind when we start out with an idea. It might also happen that we have a finished track in mind for a certain artist. Or the artist might say, oh, I like this one, but what if we do that instead? So it differs a bit every time. It‘s fair to say, again, that we haven’t got a particular setup for how we work. Being flexible and just letting things happen is the best approach for Röyksopp.

Beat / On Youtube there’s a continuous visual experience of “Profound Mysteries“, which shows animated versions of the art creations that can also be seen in the booklets. What’s the idea behind it?

Svein / First of all, we should introduce Jonathan Zawada who‘s the man behind the artifacts. There is one artifact per track. And we had been admiring Jonathan‘s work from a distance prior to this project, and we wanted to do something with him. So we approached him and explained that we had this idea for a big album called “Profound Mysteries”. He seemed to be excited about the idea and particularly the mystery part. That‘s how we came up with the artifacts as a visual representation of the mystery. Music and art is very much down to a subjective experience. So we thought the artifacts should be a representation of that. If I ask you, what do these artifacts feel like if they had a physical form? You might have an idea of whether they are hot, cold, old, new, alien, or man-made. This is exactly the kind of speculation or question we wanted to trigger.

Torbjørn / Jonathan has the ability to make his digital art really organic. This is what clicked for us in the beginning, that‘s why we wanted to work with him. We were inspired at the time by the Google DeepDream project. I think DeepDream is from 2015. The technology has progressed since then and took a new direction. But the whole idea of starting with computer generated graphics really fits well with the mystery part of our project. The question is what are we really looking at?

We have a cycle that does not follow a rigid system. This ensures a fresh look again and again. «

Svein / We have a common denominator with Jonathan in that we all work in digital, analogue and acoustic areas. We don‘t distinguish between the two expressions. It‘s not like today I‘m making something digital and the next day some analog stuff. And he does the same. He doesn’t say, it‘s digital art. It’s just art. Within that concept, he is painting and drawing on top of things just as much as he is using his computer. Just as how we make our music. ⸬