Artist:Röyksopp
Album: Melody A.M.
Year: 2002
Genre:Electronica,
Downtempo
Country:Norway
Röyksopp is an electronic music duo from Norway composed of Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge. The group formed officially in 1998 and released their debut album
Melody A.M. in 2001.Songs from this album have been used in television adverts and computer games, Remind Me is currently featured in an advertisement for GEICO Insurance in one of their popular 'Caveman' ads, Eple was licensed by Apple and used as the introduction music for the Mac OS X v10.3 Setup Assistant. A remix of Poor Leno was featured in the SSX 3 soundtrack.The word Röyksopp is a stylized version of the Norwegian word for the puffball mushroom, "røyksopp" or literally, "smoke mushroom". This same word can also be used to describe the mushroom clouds that come from atomic bombs, so this imagery is also inherent in their name.An eclectic fusion of ice cool Norwegian beats.
"Chilled-out or downbeat acts swept through the electronic scene during 2001 and 2002, prompting dozens of identikit compilations, all conjuring up images of exhausted clubbers returning home early in the morning and enjoying a cup of tea or a smoke after a hectic night out. And although downtempo electronica had always been largely album-based, most of these trackmasters didn't do much on the full-length front. The Norwegian duo Röyksopp, however, displayed a careful hand with the boards on their 2001 debut Melody A.M.. Röyksopp balances the haunted atmospheres of Boards of Canada with the more traditional "songwriting" sensibility of downbeat specialists like Groove Armada or Koop. The opener is proof enough, with a chunky bassline undergirding the spooky, ethereal refrain from Bobby Vinton's "Blue on Blue" recorded by some long-forgotten vocal chorus. There's much of beauty on Melody A.M., very textured and imaginatively produced to sound like few of their contemporaries; it's saying much to even admit that Röyksopp is occasionally the equal of such otherworldly acts as Boards of Canada or Goldfrapp. They seem a bit too indebted to the gauzy synths of '70s soundtracks, but there are a few good exceptions, like the distinctly '80s sense of artificial ethereality to the closer, "40 Years Back/Come." Picking up the ball right about where Air dropped it after Moon Safari, Röyksopp produced one of the most intriguing downbeat albums of the year."(allmusic.com)
