Norwegian electro luminaries Röyksopp are back with their second album in a year, although they actually didn‘t want to release any regular albums anymore. But „Profound Mysteries II“ is the second part of a much larger total work of art, consisting of music, videos and artwork, which not only changes the duo‘s approach to releases, but also shows Röyksopp musically more versatile than ever. We spoke to musicians Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge about their approach to production, their pragmatism when it comes to equipment, and how Google‘s DeepDream project inspired the visual side of “Profound Mysteries”, among other things.
Beat/“The Inevitable End” (2014) was supposed to be your last real album. With “Profound Mysteries” you even released two new albums within a few months. What made you change your mind?
Torbjørn / In general, what we tried to say, when we did promo for the album “The Inevitable End” was, that this is going to be the last traditional album. We felt that the album finished a story that began with our first album, “Melody A.M.”. We wanted to look for new ways of releasing music. After some time, we came up with this concept of “Profound Mysteries”. We never intended to stop making music.
Beat/“Profound Mysteries” is like a total
