Clubbing Magazine

Röyksopp: We are worse than our music
From Tromsø in Norway, where the long and dark winter nights rule, come Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge, and together they were one of the most exciting new bands to emerge on the electronic scene last year. With their critical acclaimed debut album “Melody A.M.” they have created a new sort of music that consists of a mixture of ambient, lounge, funk, house, synth, classical elements and film music. – Well you are on to something, Torbjørn tells me; – I always say that the music speaks for itself. When it comes to us as persons I think we are not as good as our music. We are worse than our music, we are people who enjoy life and like beautiful things, we don’t like hard physical work, and we love to be up at night, hence the title of the album “Melody A.M.” Listening to the music that Röksopp produces today, you can easily hear the influences from the pioneers of electronic music. - Well it isn’t an exciting story, explains Torbjørn; - I don’t really know how it began. I remember listening to Kraftwerk when I was young, I was listening to the B-side of “Autobahn” which was before they started making electro pop and still was experimenting with sounds and these sounds freaked me out and they scared me in a positive way. It was something I haven’t heard before, before that I had only heard rock music. So this opened a new world for me. When I was 12 years old I bought these maxi singles with beat intros, and recorded these on tape and looped it, and then I played some piano on top of that. One year later I met Svein and we just shared interests basically. I remember back then how hard it was to get started to make music. In the year 2002 you can basically download a program on your parent’s computer and you can start producing music. Back then it was more about hardware and I remember I looked at stars at night, wishing that I could afford a sampler and somehow we managed that after a while. Beforehand we used to go to shops and borrow stuff. When we had our own stuff we really got going.
Before the two of them became Röksopp they were a part of the group Aedena Cycle. They released “The Travelleres Dream” on the Apollo label back in 1995. - We stared with ambient music; Torbjørn continues; - it comes really natural to make this ambient stuff when you grow up in Tromsø, which has this dark period in the winter. From there we got more involved in house music. I think after we met girls, we wanted to be a little more funkier, so bassline and beats came in. That is the background we have - The rhythmical aspect in house music, where the bassline is the rhythm and the ambient where the basis is the atmosphere. None of these are known for melodic stuff. So what we wanted to do is to combine the two influences in Röksopp. The live element of Röyksopp has brought them on tour with Orbital, Modjo, Bassment Jaxx and Garbage. Torbjørn explains, - It is just us having a good time and being energetic about what we do. Normally it’s just the two of us, but sometimes we have other people with us on stage like a bass player, but that differs. The live element is as equal enjoyable for us playing with sounds in the studio. With hits like “Eple” with its smooth and simple melody and the rhythmic and catchy “Poor Leno”, which has been remixed by Sander Kleinenberg and Silicone Soul, have placed them firmly on the music map. - We are at a level now where we can choose what we want to do, Torbjørn emphasises: - After this year we will know more on what we will focus on, we are still trying out different things, the live thing, the remixing and producing other artists. In order to have full impact you can’t do everything you should focus on something. We don’t have the knowledge yet to really go on focus on one thing, we are still looking. Interview published: Clubbing Magazine # 3 Feb-Mar 2002
Audio part You can listen to an extra interview with Röksopp here. The interview was done in the spring 2002. Length: 19.15 min, mono 32kbps Size: 4514Kb Format: MP3
Interview by: Christian Almind