Röyksopp
Live Muffathalle Monaco 26.03.02

The concert is introduced by the DJ playing Rossini's "La Gazza ladra" (I asked…) which, at that volume and through a PA, wasn’t bad at all… nice dynamics…

"We are Röyksopp," pronounced "Royks-op," say Torbjorn Brundtland and Svein Berge, Norwegians from Tromsø, the northernmost city on Earth, as they enter the stage.
On stage, two Roland electronic drums, those flat ones, drum pads to be played with sticks, leaning on two X keyboard stands, a piece of modern history last seen used by Peter Hook of New Order, a Korg M1 keyboard, quite old as well, where they transformed the "G" into an "N," and a Roland.
In plain view and facing the audience is a laptop. The trick is revealed. Everything comes from a sequencer (Kraftwerk, Orbital, Daft Punk, Moby…). The idea is not new. What's new is how they bring movement to a static act.

Svein (I hope it’s him, it was the name on tracks 1 and 2 of the mixer), at the left of the stage, plays percussion on the sequencer bases, continues to put the sticks into the pockets of his jeans, handle a rack, turn knobs of some analog effect, pull the sticks out again and play syncopated rhythms on the drum pads, open a delay send, dancing to the rhythm, it seems like he's walking in place, while Torbjorn stays behind the keyboards and starts the sequencer on the laptop.
They manage to produce moments of occasional beauty on the more rhythmic pieces, starting from an ambient bed for an unstoppable crescendo with a syncopated rhythm.

With "Om Ravpuling," they introduce "the man in the shadow, Ole," who plays bass for most of the set but can barely be heard, too low in the mix.
What comes out of the sequencer is impeccable, while some melodic parts coming from the M1 are dated, the synthetic sound, classic synthesizer (phat), found from the DX7 onwards.

The melodic phrases are deconstructed, looped, the loop almost never closes, beautiful, on techno-trance backgrounds, obsessive at times.

Then with five, the crime, the vocoder takes the stage, and cursed be whoever invented it (Kraftwerk?), used in all the sung parts, though in some it's less annoying.
They always recover with purer pieces, minimal in construction, with nice loops in the background.

In the last songs, Svein places an analog Korg (Minimoog clone) on one of the drums, the one that at times wasn't working ("can someone fix it?" - he asked), and performs some nice tweaking, modulating the sound with the oscillators.
A nice analog. A nice concert, in the end more good moments than bad ones, even though it's not the ultimate.
Honest.

The kind man at the mixer gave us the setlist, which we report uncritically, respecting the writing style, all caps, with indication of songs with bass BASS and vocoder VOCODA (sic!)

 

1. YOUR HANDS
2. SO EASY
3. R-SOPPS'S NIGHT OUT
4. OM RAVPULING/BASS
5. MEKOM REMIX/BASS VOCODA
6. SHE'S SO/VOCODA
7. A HIGHR PLACE/BASS
8. EPLE
9. REMIND ME/BASS VOCODA
10. DON'T GIVE UP/VOCODA
11. ISTAMBUL FOREVER
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12. FELIX DE HOUSE REMIX
13. POOR LENO/BASS VOCODA
14. OUTRO