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Artist: Royksopp
Album: Senior
Released: Monday September 13th
Label: Wall of Sound
Genre: Electronic/'Electronica'
Price: £9.99 (HMV)
Concept albums were once commonplace in the music industry. Grand, innovative art forms, dabblers in the 'concept' included everyone from Pink Floyd with Dark Side of The Moon to Kraftwerk and The Man Machine.
While Gaia theories and New Age templates were set in the 1990s concept renaissance for artists like The Orb and Enigma, electronic music had missed out on a fresh electro 'journey'-like vision since. Step forward Norweigan duo Royskopp.
Svein Berge and Torbjorn Brundtland's success until now had been borne on the amalgamation of crisp, ambient synthetic textures and an ability to pen a catchy pop tune. But on Senior, the Scandinavian pair who were named 'Best International Group' at the 2003 BRIT awards, adopt the best of their previous albums, 2001's critically acclaimed Melody A.M., 2005's The Understanding and 2009's Junior and combine subtle motifs with sonic grandeur.
The pair described Senior - which is completely instrumental bar some short sporadic vocal samples - as a "withdrawn, atmospheric" counterpart to Junior. At times Senior embodies the demonic, banished twin, succumbing to life in a dark, dank, Godsend-like basement as part of a Robert De Niro experiment which failed miserably. Indeed its concept revolves around following the life of an individual with fluctuating behaviour and altered states of mind travelling through life. And the idea of a journey and music's thematic love of 'driving' appears none more so evidently than on Tricky Two - part two of Junior's Tricky Tricky - with its throbbing synth bass pulse evoking themes of Kraftwerk's Autobahn and Saint Etienne's Like A Motorway.
Meanwhile the isolated mixture of weirdness and ambience of arrangement continues with The Alcoholic. While The Orb's The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld sampled science fiction themes including Max von Sydow (The Exorcist fame) on 1980's Flash Gordon and Apollo moon landing excerpts and German-Romanian fusion group Enigma had a penchant for Gregorian chanting and sexual repression, Royksopp fill the peculiarly endearing The Alcoholic with atmospheric bird tweeting and rain storms to add to the idea of an individual 'hitch-hiking from place-to-place', according to Berge and Brundtland. Alongside panning slithering synth brass and rhythmic precision, it's as if Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider, Ralf Hutter and co. had returned to the studio, as is the likeness for daring roboticism and orchestral/choral wonder.
Although next track Senior Living delves further into more recent electronic soundscapes with its likenesses to Moby's Wait For Me and Radiohead's Kid A while maintaining the addition of both albums' gentile and clunking guitar lines and sprinklings of electronic percussion.
The track itself is the merger between the alcoholic character's lapse into an even more vulnerable and dependant state of an ageing being and one which could tip over the edge and does so, ideally, for following track The Drug. With its wispy synthetic opening and doom-laden bassline it begins like something out of Orbital or The Orb's back catalogue without ever straying too far from the creditable artistry of melodic arpeggios and intoxicating - yet sometimes perplexingly different - tunes Royksopp duly deliver on each album. The Drug then teeters back and forth in compulsive Prozac evoking fashion with panning chords and basslines sweeping relentlessly through your head/earphones.
Forsaken Cowboy is next up and contains the quality of Royksopp's staple tune Eple, while conjuring themes of a haunting South American landscape set for a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western serial, placing it alongside The Beatmasters' simple-yet-effective hypnotic electro-country rock remix of Depeche Mode's Route 66. This track which is one of the most surprisingly catchy on Senior features the only credited vocals on the album by Lindy Fay Hella and encapsulates the notable theme on Senior; less is more.
Having said that, despite a stark minimalism set around layers of ambient noise, the idea of less is more is not always so prominent. Take The Fear - not to be confused with Lily Allen's #1 hit of 2009 which is one of only a few of her discography to deserve acclaim - which merges eerie orchestral string swathes with humming synthetics and real drumming, yes real drumming on an electronic album performed by Bjorn Saether which adds to the manic, West Coast-esque film soundtrack feel of leaving for a new life to escape from the paranoia and complexities of life which preceded it.
Coming Home returns Rokysopp to the tinkling melodies of Melody A.M. and The Understanding while adopting an adept-yet-peculiarly penned instrumental simplicity reserved for albums like Goldfrapp's Felt Mountain. It embodies the near completion of the journey and the experiences which life for Senior's protagonist has witnessed on the album's 55 minute meandering through beauty and beast.
But finally, A Long, Long Way rounds off the album with some bizarre manic Pink Floyd-like Dark Side of The Moon vocal samples, monotonous basslines and wonderfully infectious underwater dreamworld type chord changes and melodies all in the space of 12 minutes. It is an end to what is a truly epic masterpiece, which along the way confuses, nags and shimmers without ever sounding too contrived towards gaining extra-special oddball status. Essentially, this track concludes the idea that it's going to be a long trek of recovery before returning to normality.
Perhaps the problem for Royksopp is where to go from here. While Senior embodies conceptual textures of splendour, madness and grace in true sonic pomposity, there is a sense that like a lot of electronic musicians - take last month's Giants by Chicane - ideas, arpeggio riffs and words are becoming even harder to produce without sounding the same.
Though for Royksopp, this album would always be a challenge and the duo's labelling that Senior would carry an 'autumn feel' is apt; its other downside is that perhaps it is more suitable for melancholic and evocative phases of mood or an ardent electronic fan.
Indeed, Royksopp have managed with Senior to produce something so contrasting not only from comparing their previous work, but from the banal packaged pop and 'R n B' which litters the music charts and surrounds them at present. Yet while it contrasts their back catalogue it so easily compares to it too which leaves you feeling they can yet spring more surprises with future releases and in many ways is an album not to be pigeon-holed too regularly as it carries character of its own.
As a modern concept album, Senior ticks all the boxes and leaves you to wonder if Alan Parsons or Kraftwerk's Karl Bartos could do as good a job today as two modest Norwegians did this week.
Download: The Alcoholic, The Drug, Forsaken Cowboy
If you like this, try these: Kraftwerk - The Man Machine, The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, Radiohead - Kid A, Moby - Wait For Me.
