Refraining from an album release since 2014’s 'The Inevitable End', Norwegian electronic duo Royksöpp (Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland) have returned with an outstanding, prodigious conceptual project. Slowly generating hype with regular instalments since January 1st, ‘Profound Mysteries’ is the summing of many moving parts; an album spanning ten mesmerising tracks, each possessing its own unique artefact and visualiser by Australian contemporary artist Jonathan Zawada, each accompanied by a short film in partnership with European film production company Bacon, and all accessible through an inventive online launchpad.
While the project is perhaps best experienced as an audiovisual entity, with each track forged as two sides of one coin, every piece of this puzzle soars in its own right. Remarkably, the experience sits as a choice in the hands of the perceiver.
The duo ease us in with the opener ‘(Nothing But) Ashes’, an immediate exploration of texture within its own universe. The track toys with vibrant synthesis and sauntering piano, warped and tattered, drifting alongside a voyage through digital liquid, which culminates in a full exposure of the piece’s artefact (the latter appearing in the accompanying short film). Delicate clean guitars meld with shifting beats in the preceding instrumental ‘The Ladder’, its composition and synthetic components presenting a delicate attention to detail, and the faultless audiovisual imagery of climbing further up the rungs.
In non-instrumental inclusions, ‘Profound Mysteries’ utilises the distinct vocal qualities of various collaborators; Alison Goldfrapp’s whispering tones sit atop the gnarly, kaleidoscopic shoestomper ‘Impossible, while Pixx delivers a deeper robotic melody with a remarkable, soft spoken humanity in the foreboding ‘How The Flowers Grow’. Perhaps the musical focal point of the project, Susanne Sundfør’s vocal inclusions soar in ‘The Mourning Sun’, the piece opening as a hypnotising, beatless landscape, extending into a meditative space walk across a seemingly synthetic galaxy.
The most visually stimulating components of this audiovisual exploration are exemplified in the pumping, plucky techno of ‘This Time, This Place’ and the shifting alternative house of ‘Breathe’, which both feature their illuminated artefacts being brought to life as pulsating, mechanical organisms, blinking and shifting like decaying cyborgs caught between reality and unreality.
A long time in the making, Royksöpp have birthed an engaging, expressive multimedia universe suspended in digital mystery, a sum of many components meticulously executed. ‘Profound Mysteries’ truly captures the imagination, and excitingly hints at the next leg of this perceptual voyage; simply ‘Press R’ to continue…
9/10
Words: Kieran Macdonald-Brown
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