As RÖYKSOPP gear up for the release of their hugely-anticipated third album, Junior, ALASDAIR DUNCAN enters the weird and wonderful world of beat-maker TORBJØRN BRUNDTLAND. They start with talk of the group’s famous vocal collaborations, but somehow end up on a radioactive blimp high above Russia. Curious? Read on ...

Back in 2002, Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and captivated the world with their debut, Melody AM – with its blissfully tripped-out Scandinavian sounds, that album floated in a ray of sunshine, and produced hits like Eple and Poor Leno. Next came The Understanding – darker and more epic, it showcased a chillier side of the duo’s music, and its success ensured them a place on electronic music’s A-list. Nearly four years later, Röyksopp are gearing up to release their third album, Junior, which is sure to surprise fans yet again. A sun-dappled collection of disco and house tracks, it represents a thaw for the band, and is easily their most joyful collection so far.

"We’re older now, and a lot happier, and I think that this new take on life is definitely reflected in the new songs," Torbjørn Brundtland is telling me, on the phone from his Norwegian home. "Our last album was about break-ups, and there were a lot of songs on it that were about the end of something. I think that this album is a lot more optimistic – to me, it’s all about new beginnings." First single Happy Up Here is a fairly good indication of Röyksopp’s new-found contentment – with its head-nodding beats, infectious sampled vocals and electro bleeps, it looks back to tracks like Eple, but also points forward.

Junior is, undoubtedly, Röyksopp’s most animated album to date. Burbling ballads like Vision One rub shoulders with downbeat disco tracks like Miss It So Much, and the closing pair of songs, True To Life and It’s What I Want, are as epic as fans could possibly want. With this in mind, though, Brundtland is quick to ensure me that this is not an album aimed at the dance floor. "Junior definitely has a lot more upbeat tracks on it," he says "but I wouldn’t say it’s specifically a dance album. Take a track like Röyksopp Forever. It’s one of the slower moments on the album, with the strings and the syncopated beats. If we wanted to make a dance floor album, we would have gone back to things like that and put a lot more heft behind them."

Röyksopp have always been known for their impeccable taste in collaborators – wistful singer-songwriter Erlend Øye lent his vocals to Melody AM, while The Understanding introduced The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson to the wider world. Andersson returns on Junior, but the album showcases two brand new vocalists, established pop singer Robyn and new kid on the block Lykke Li. Brundtland tells me that these two collaborations came about in very different ways.

"Lykke Li is well known now because her album has been such a big success," he says, "but we met her before that. We happened across her MySpace page, and there were songs there that were just her and a piano, but even based on that, we were enchanted and we decided that we had to work with her, so we contacted her and she was able to come to the studio and record some songs with us."

Robyn, on the other hand, had been on Röyksopp’s radar for a while – she started young, releasing her first album at sixteen, and is one of Scandinavia’s biggest recording artists. Scoring her for the blippy disco track The Girl And The Robot was definitely a coup for the group. "When you’re a pop star like Robyn," Brundtland says, "you have two choices – you can become very inflexible and controlling over the material you choose, or you can maintain your sense of fun and adventure, and enter into new and strange collaborations. Fortunately for us, Robyn is the second type. We were thrilled to be able to work with her."

When it comes to collaborations, many dance acts will complete a track then hand it over to a vocalist and tell them to sing something over the top, but this is most assuredly not the case with Röyksopp. "When we write songs with other people, we always do it collaboratively," Brundtland tells me. "We will invite them to our studio and work on writing the track together. We’ll all do our various parts and just keep working until we’re satisfied that the whole thing has come together as a whole."

Speaking of Röyksopp’s studio, when I ask Brundtland where he and production partner Svein Berge get most of their recording done, he has quite a tale to tell. "We used to make most of our songs in a blimp floating high above Russia," he deadpans. "The name of the blimp was Trinity – we’d cruise around up there writing and recording songs, but unfortunately, Trinity was shot down by nuclear warheads." I take the bait, and ask how Röyksopp have been getting by since their blimp was so unfortunately shot down?

"Well," he continues, "after that happened, we landed on the ground and noticed that there was a lot of radiation around, and that the radiation seemed to be leading us in a certain direction. We followed it for a long time, and we came to a place where the radiation seemed to be coming out of the ground. The people there would drink the water and then they would turn into mutants, but good mutants. That’s where we write and record now." Excellent.

Given the title Junior, and the bizarre direction that our interview already seems to have taken, I can’t resist asking if Röyksopp have any plans to follow this album up with a companion piece called Senior – imagine my surprise when Brundtland tells me that this is exactly what the group plan to do. "We haven’t told many people this yet," he continues, "but Junior is actually going to be the first of a set of two albums. Senior, the second one, will hopefully be released later this year. The two will complement each other in a way, but they’re also going to be very different . Junior is very playful and very song-based, but Senior is going to reflect another side of our sound entirely."

Senior, contrary to what one might expect, will not feature male vocalists to balance out the many women on Junior – in fact, it will be mostly instrumental. "There will be one or two vocal tracks on it, but it’s not going to have straightforward pop songs – I guess you would say that it has tracks instead of songs, and they’re going to be longer and more experimental." Like Lindstrom’s recent space-disco epic Where You Go, I Go Too, I wonder? "Not exactly like that," Brundtland tells me, "because that album was focussed on the dance floor, but ours will not be so much. If Junior is dressed in a t-shirt and cool sneakers, then Senior is going to show up dressed in tweed and smoking a pipe ..."

Though Röyksopp have been on the world stage for nearly seven years, they have not yet toured Australia. Brundtland tells me that they hope to address this wrong, but does not know yet if, or when, it will happen. "We’d love to come down," he says. "We’re always hearing how great the crowds are down there and how receptive they are. We’ve almost toured a few times, but things have gotten in the way, or the time just hasn’t been right. There are no definite plans yet, but as soon as we can, we’ll be there."

JUNIOR is released through EMI on Monday March 23. Check out www.royksopp.com for more information.

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