Good Weather For Airstrikes

A) Finals are over and I’m on winter break, so expect both the post quantity and quality to increase dramatically (I can hear the cheering in the streets now. B) This is probably my favorite post I’ve made so far, simply because Royksopp is so unrelentlessly awesome, so do read on.

I feel as if the electronica music genre is vastly under-represented in the blogging scene, and to hopefully bring a change to that I’ll be drawing attention to some of my favorite electronica artists in the coming weeks (after the massive Best of ‘05 blowout), starting off with my favorite electronica act, Royksopp. Royksopp, made up of Norwegians Svein Berge (left) and Torbjorn Brundtland (right), is quite possibly Norway’s finest export, and have quickly jumped ahead of Four Tet, Caribou, and the rest of the pack as my favorite electronic act.

Royksopp’s brand of oft-blissful, sometimes dark electronica was first played for me by my former girlfriend Lizzy when I visited her in London last spring and she played me “Eple”, from the duo’s 2001 debut Melody AM. It was the perfect song for springtime, and as I would come to find out, summertime, sunshine, happiness, frivolity, whimsy, and any and all activities involving conscious-altering activities (seriously, if anyone wants to know what it’s like to trip on ’shrooms [I tried it once, it was Amsterdam, I was young, it was awesome], just listen to “Eple”). The drug-like high that comes from listening to “Eple” on a sunny day should come as no surprise though, as Royksopp literally translates into “Smoking Mushroom” in Norwegian. “Eple” is an absolute masterpiece, and was even licensed by Apple for use in the start-up sequence of Apple’s Mac OS X Panther operating system (ironically, or just fittingly, “Eple” means “Apple” in Norwegian). However, at some point I’m going to have to stop raving about “Eple”, lest you get the opinion that Royksopp are some sort of one-hit wonder, as “Eple” is only the tip of the blissful electro-pop iceberg that is Royksopp.

After “Eple” became my official song of spring and early summer, I heard “Only This Moment”, the first single off of the duo’s then-upcoming sophomore effort, The Understanding, which was released on July 12th. This resulted in a week spent doing nothing but lying on the beach listening to the track (and forcing all my friends to listen to as well). The Understanding takes Royksopp’s sound in a new direction, as the duo brings their own vocals into the mix (Melody AM was comprised of only instrumentals and tracks featuring guest vocals), and any worries about this change were allieved by the blissful perfection of “Only This Moment”. “Moment”, as well as the album’s opener, “Triumphant” (which was used in the fourth episode of this season’s installment of The OC), stand out as two of the year’s best songs, and will surely be present on my year-end Best Songs of ‘05 list.

Finally, perhaps Royksopp’s most attractive trait to me (and probably only to me), is their penchant for releasing incredible music videos. In addition to the videos of Sigur Ros and The White Stripes, Royksopp’s music videos are some of the most consistently-amazing clips around, and in 2002 the duo’s video for “Remind Me” was even awarded MTV Europe’s “Video of the Year” award. You can download all of Royksopp’s videos, with the exception of their clip for “49 Percent” (in the unlikely event that any of you out there have this video, I’d be severely indebted to you if you could send it to me), below, in addition to all of the [highly recommended] MP3s. The best of the bunch is definitely the perfect “Only This Moment” video, an absolutely incredible World War II-era propaganda clip featuring incredible effects and beautiful cinematography. This is easily my second-favorite video of the year (just behind “Glosoli” and just ahead of “Blue Orchid”), so please download it, you won’t regret it (especially if, you know, you’re high at the time when you watch it… just sayin’). Other highlights include the aforementioned “Remind Me” video, the band’s adorable, yet still awesome, clip for “Poor Leno”, as well as the fantastic video for the duo’s most recent single “What Else Is There?”, featuring vocals from Karin Dreifer, the lead vocalist in Swedish brother-sister electronic duo and Gorilla vs Bear favorite, The Knife.

MP3s:
“Eple” - Royksopp [highly highly recommended]
“The Understanding” - Royksopp [highly recommended]
“Only This Moment” - Royksopp [OC-approved!]
“What Else Is There?” - Royksopp ft. Karin Dreifer

Video:
“Eple” - Royksopp
“Poor Leno” - Royksopp [highly recommended]
“Remind Me” - Royksopp [2002 MTV2 Europe “Video of the Year”]
“Only This Moment” - Royksopp [highly highly recommended]
“What Else Is There?” - Royksopp [highly recommended]

I’m also going to use this post to place a request to all of you readers out there, to see if any of you have Royksopp’s iTunes-exclusive single “Curves”, which I am desperately after, but due to it’s UK-only release, cannot find. So yeah, if anyone had that I think I’d be a lot happier person.

[side note: GvB has not only the Imogen Heap song from Narnia (the one they play at the end that, well, sounds a lot like Imogen Heap), “Can’t Take It In”, for download here, he also has a new Belle & Sebastian song from The Life Pursuit that somehow I didn’t have on my leaked version of the album, “We Are The Sleepyheads”, which you can get here.]

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 3:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.