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PREFIX<br />
OBSESSIONS: RÖYKSOPP<br />
Norwegian electronic popsters find their<br />
passion in colored pulp.<br />
Talking to Röyksopp’s tow-headed Torbjørn Brundtland and bearded<br />
Svein Berge is like wandering through a densely overgrown forest–<br />
comments meander off the beaten path, sometimes rejoining the trail<br />
of thought five minutes later, sometimes never at all. It’s similar to<br />
listening to their music, where skeins of electro, softly woven synths,<br />
and tender vocals tiptoe through airy, pulsating backgrounds of chilled<br />
out Euro-pop–the journey as the destination. On July 12, the duo<br />
released The Understanding, their follow-up to 2001’s lauded Melody<br />
A.M. Though they were vague about the album–except to say that<br />
it’s a more vocal affair–these surreal superheroes were happy to talk<br />
about the influence comic books have had on them. Tyra Bangs<br />
www.royksopp.com, www.astralwerks.com<br />
Röyksopp: Torbjørn Brundtland and<br />
Svein Berge (Camille Vivier)<br />
Röyksopp on comics<br />
“Comics [have] been part of us ever since we were kids. We started<br />
with [Swedish comic] Bamse (pronounced “bum-suh”), which is a nice<br />
story of a bear-like creature who has to eat special honey to become<br />
very strong. We also like Robert Crumb, Dave Cooper at Fantagraphic,<br />
and Carl Barks, who drew Donald Duck. And Jim Woodring; he’s just<br />
released something in the form of a children’s book about a small animal<br />
called Trosper, a cute mini-elephant. It’s not splatter-type horror but<br />
I would hesitate more to show this to my potential kid than to show<br />
them a horror movie. It’s like a David Lynch Eraserhead kind of dark.<br />
The nice thing about comics is that it doesn’t take that much resources<br />
to make a good one. If you have an idea for the best science fiction<br />
movie in the world–say 10 times better than Star Wars–and there’s no<br />
way that you can become a big Hollywood director with a huge budget,<br />
you can still make a cartoon and share these ideas. Comic books [are<br />
so appealing] because they don’t have limitations.”