Röyksopp: The Inevitable End

    Always a good surprise to find a new album from a great artist. Norwegian electronica duo Röyksopp consisting of Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland is one of my favorite electro artsists. Previous albums like Melody A.M. (2001), The Understanding (2005) and Junior (2010) were fantastic, namely Junior. To me, Senior (2010) was a letdown, but I can see that it was mostly unreleased material from Junior. Confirmation that The Inevitable End (released on the Dog Triumph label) will be Röyksopp's final full length album is disappointing, especially when I think they are at the top of their game and the time has never been so right for the world to accept electro.
    Some big names of course are dotted throughout the album, like Robyn (who has done a number of other songs in collaboration with Röyksopp on previous albums), Susanne Sundfør and Jamie Irrepressible (a.k.a. Jamie McDermott). Check out more about each artist by clicking the link in their name.
    Overall, this album has great energy, while understated, that is brooding and dark. There are lots of lyrical references that allude to something that went wrong or mistakes that were made, regrets and failures--not that I pay attention to lyrics much. One word of caution: the song "Rong" contains explicit lyric content, repeating "what the f*** is [r]ong with you?" over and over, nothing else, literally. Musically it's a cool number but you won't lose the whole effect of the record if you skip it for reasons of conscience.
    Some of the album highlights for me are:
(1) "Monument (T.I.E. version)" - the first track starts off right, lots of energy and great gritty electronic noises that Röyksopp does so well, as well as the vocals by Robyn.
(5) "Save Me" - the vocals lines are great, especially where it just fades off on a high note.
There are others but these are probably my favorites. There are about five extra songs that never made the album but are on a "disc two" in some formats, I'm not sure entirely. Some of the songs may be from the collaborative EP Röyksopp did with Robyn titled Do It Again (2014 also). See here.
   Check out the song "Monument" (a preview from Röyksopp's Soundcloud) over under the 'Monthly Sample Tracks'. Enjoy!