Genres: Electropop, Synthpop, House, Ambient
Last week the project for Microsoft in Stockholm ended. I decided to stay a weekend in Stockholm so I would be able to see some of the city. By coincidence I found out through a collegue that Röyksopp would perform on Friday in music palace Berns. It was time to check that out...
Off course the concert was already sold out, but I decided to take the chance and find out if I could manage to get a ticket on the spot. At last I succeeded together with two other people. The price was too high off course, but hey, it is Röyksopp, which means quality granted.
The band started at 22:00 hour, so enough time to admire the imposing room in Berns while enjoying a beer. After another beer, it took some time for Röyksopp, the concert started with a long constructive tune that transmuted into one of their favorites 'Röyksopp Forever'.
Röyksopp consists of Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge, two school friends from Tromsø, Norway. They experimented in their young years a lot with electronic music. But Röyksopp only started years later when they met again in Bergen. In that time Bergen was a city with a fair underground scene for electronic music. They worked together with other musicians like Frost, the guitar player / singer of Kings of Convenience; Erlend Øye, Those Norwegians and Drum Island. They were also called the Bergen Wave.
The name Röyksopp is a stylized version of the Norwegian word for the puffball mushroom, "røyksopp" or literally, "smoke mushroom".
It was the third time I saw Röyksopp performing. The first time I saw them on the Drum 'n Rhythm festival at the ‘Kop van Java’ in Amsterdam. This festival started again after years of silence under the name of Raw Rhythm festival. The name had to change, since sponsoring by tobacco companies was not allowed anymore.
At that time Röyksopp had just started. By accident I heard their first CD ‘Melody A.M.’ (2001) at a friend of mine and it sounded good right away. With this CD they had a lot of success and it earned them a lot of respect, also because they were very young at the time.
A few months later I went for a year to Australia. During this trip I listened to their CD all day long and everybody I let listen to their music got immediately interested.
The second time I saw them live was on the Lowlands festival in Biddinghuizen. This was at the time they just released their second album ‘The Understanding’ (2005). That album put them right in the position they are to this day, if that didn’t happen already. This album was different though from the first one. The music was more danceable and less dreamy and mysterious. This show was dressed up with a Harley Davidson driven on stage and by playing the crowd from off an old phone booth.
The performance in Stockholm didn’t need this. Here the music spoke for itself, accompanied by Robyn (Robin Miriam Carlsson) and Anneli Marian Drecker. Both ladies do the vocals on various songs and can also be heard on their previous album. Röyksopp played almost all the songs of their new album ‘Junior’ (2009) together with their successes from the previous albums.
Two times they returned for a bonus, thanks to the crowd that went through the roof. Or it was because the two guys from Norway approached the crowd in Swedish. The first bonus consisted of 'So Easy' and 'Poor Leno'. The second bonus was actually a fifteen minute jam session, which was a really good end of a really good concert. Again they proved that what I was hoping for: a fantastic show. As a matter of fact, in that case it’s no problem to pay a little bit more for Röyksopp, it was worth the money.
Soon I will post some pictures of this concert.