Album Review: Röyksopp – True Electric

I remember Melody A.M. being released in 2001 like it was yesterday!  The artists, ​Röyksopp, are a Norwegian duo composed of Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland, and have been a force in electronic music since they appeared on the scene in the late 1990s.  Known for ambient synth-pop hooks, they’ve been pushing the boundaries of the genre since their beginnings.  With a sizeable discography, True Electric becomes their tenth studio album release, through their own label, Dog Triumph, and features nineteen unique studio versions of tracks from their 2023 True Electric tour, showing further evolution from the Röyksopp musical experience.  At 4 hours long in total, it’s quite the commitment to reviewing!!!  Let’s dive right in….

Kicking off with the first of two non-vocal tracks, The Ladder pulses with smooth synths and hypnotic rhythms, setting the tone for sonic immersion to come. Next up features one of my favourite vocalists, superstar Alison Goldfrapp, on Impossible, in what is my favourite track of the album – surging dark synths and Alison’s haunting vocals layered over, providing a track with pulsing, hypnotic urgency. This Time, This Place sees Beki Mari add vocals to ethereal synths in this slow building track, whilst the other huge vocal name Robyn adds her tones to The Girl And The Robot in something of an odd mismatch of track to vocals in this pounding should be a non-vocal tech-house track – not the best track to add a singer of Robyn’s talents to!!

After the box standard house Here She Comes Again (ft. Jamie Irrepressible), Robyn provides vocals to a more suitable track, Monument – with slow electro thumping beats and classic house breaks. Oh, Lover (ft. Susanne Sundfør) continues in the same style as the previous track, with thumping slower hypnotic beats, while Unity (ft. Karen Harding) has a real mid 1990’s feel to the beat – which I love – and this ‘old school’ vibe continues through to the late 1990’s with the excellent You Don’t Have A Clue (ft. Anneli Drecker) & The “R”.

As we begin the second half of the True Electric tracks, Breathe (ft. Astrid S), Running To The Sea (ft. Susanne Sundfør) and What Else Is There? (ft. Fever Ray) are all decent yet unremarkable house tracks – pretty generic but still with a high production quality, while Never Ever (ft. Susanne Sundfør) takes a poppy edge to the album, and not an edge I’m really into. Thankfully this direction is short lived, as Sordid Affair (ft. Man Without Country) gives us deep house – a welcome recalibration in the direction of the album.

Entering the latter stages of True Electric we have the very tech house I Had This Thing with Jamie Irrepressible adding vocals, in a well-constructed track which builds to various peaks, and a driving set of synths that could end up with a slew of speeding fines if you dared to listen to whilst driving. Feel It (ft. Maurissa Rose) returns to the nostalgic 1990’s feels of earlier in the album, whilst penultimate track “Do It Again” sees a third and final appearance of Robyn, in another track that I don’t think fits her vocals well. Rounding off True Electric we have Like An Old Dog (ft. Pixx) – the best track on the second half of the album – real dirty techno. A bright end to an underwhelming second half.

I’m going to be honest, True Electric started out really strong, but a combination of a fall-off in quality from the first four or five tracks paired with listeners fatigue purely from the duration of the album, I found this very hard to finish and was willing the album to end. The Goldfrapp track and the early Sundfør tracks were excellent, but I found myself a little disappointed with the Robyn tracks which I thought didn’t have a good blend between the style of house music and her vocal range/tone.  I will be adding Impossible to my favourites, but otherwise it’s unlikely to be an album I’ll be listening to start-to-end again.

Graeme R