Do It Again – Robyn & Röyksopp (album review)

Do It Again “mini-album” artwork – Röyksopp & Robyn

After collaborating together several times before, on each other’s albums, Robyn & Röyksopp decided to go one step further. The “mini-album” (called so despite its thirty-five minutes length) with a ten-minute track called “Monument”. “Do It Again” reportedly serves as an introduction to Röyksopp’s upcoming album, which is set to be released later in 2014 and will feature two reworked songs from the mini-album.

The “mini-album” is described by the trio to have a “band feel” so they decided to release the mini-album as a unit, rather than record for one another. Both said this album doesn’t sound like “Robyn produced by Röyksopp” or “Röyksopp featuring Robyn”, but something else entirely. “The word ‘collaboration’ has never before been more justified in the world of music!”.

“Monument”, inspired by the Brazilian-American artist Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s clay sculptures, features a minimal instrumentation based only on a saxophone (speaked of by Torbjørn [Röyksopp] as a bit of a challenge, to get the melody to continue through nine minutes without adding more lyrics or vocals), and a synthesised bass. “Monument” talks about mortality, about “defining who you are”, about space and time. (“Time, space and saxophone” – Torbjørn). Robyn stated it’s also about “a physical sensation of an emotion”.

“Sayit”, a techno-house explosive song, is described by Torbjørn as “very tonally twisted”. Dissectable in two main pieces, so in the first one, it’s harder to “feel the melodies” by the way the tones are shaped, but it becomes more concrete as soon as the second bass line joins in, features robotic vocals as well as Robyn’s and grows into a “S&M” detonating vibe. (“There is something about repetition, that after a while, it puts you, hopefully, in a good state of mind where your focus narrows, narrows, narrows, or maybe it expands… It almost like some kind of meditation, I guess, that’s the… fun thing, I think, about dance music.” – Robyn).

Still from the “Sayit” video.

The title track, “Do It Again” is described by the trio as an “accidental pop song”. Is a “throbbing” electropop song  on which Robyn “contemplates resuming an on-again, off-again relationship”, while incorporating “fluttering” synths and “slamming” drums. It was conceived by Robyn and Röyksopp after an “epic” night out in Bergen, Norway. Released as the album’s lead single, “it short of chose itself” as it.

“Every Little Thing” is the upbeat-ballad of the record. A bittersweet electro composition that “layers synthesizers and a gently pulsating beat to evoke heartbeats and conflicted emotions” and sets up the mood for the closing piece of the album. Its echoes speak of pain while the beat and lyrics are filled with rage and reproach.

The closing track is a ten-minute almost instrumental song, “Inside the Idle Hour Club”, an “almost eerie ambient soundscape”. If the whole album describes a fulminant, thrilling night out, “Inside the Idle Hour Clubt” is the comeback home path, the feeling of the sun rising and memories being composed at the back of your mind. A somber growth of every sensation the mini-album has recreated.

Here’s a tip once you’ve finished the album: play it backwards. From the closing track, to “Monument”, the album is composed so that the first song can serve as a darker closer to the actual closer.