Röyksopp and Robyn Break Down Their Future-Pop Collaboration "Do It Again"

In late April, Röyksopp and Robyn released a short-but-arresting snippet from a collaborative track called "Monument." The ethereal piece of music teased us about a new release from the Scandinavian electro-pop maestros, and...

by The Creators Project

May 30, 2014, 4:00pm

On May 26, Robin Carlsson (Robyn), Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland (Röyksopp) debuted the five-track mini album Do It Again, and, despite high expectations, the record is a sonic tour de force that will undoubtedly blast its way through every club on both sides of the Atlantic this summer. To celebrate the release, The Creators Project interviewed the world-renowned artists on camera in Mexico while they filmed the video for the title track. Watchable above, they told us about how Do It Again came to fruition, about a massive earthquake that interrupted the making of the song's music video, as well as a track-by-track breakdown of the mini album.

The artists met in Bergen, Norway, where Robyn explained to us that she felt she didn't have a solo album in mind, but instead wanted to experiment. Thus, when the three musicians started toying with some ideas, it was a low-stakes but high-reward situation where everyone could win—especially the fans.

"I like working with with [Röyskopp] because it's very open and very fluid," Robyn said. "They get their head around very delicate details and big emotions. It's this very qualitative way of thinking about arrangements, but we've also let ourselves go a bit as a group and discovered things together."

It was a seamless process, only interrupted by an unexpected 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Mexico's Pacific coast. The quake halted the production of the "Do It Again" video, but Robyn explained it almost complemented the energy of both the song and the music video. "There's a chaotic thing that works," she said. Berge agreed, and added "There's an energy in Mexico City that is somehow applicable to the thing we're doing here."

Robyn finished the anecdote with the fitting quote, "I didn't even notice [the earthquake], I was just dancing." The image of her cutting up the floor as everyone on the crew runs for the hills during a natural disaster is oddly fitting—like an unconscious but amazing nod to "Dancing On My Own."

The team worked particularly well together due to their shared and notorious love for enhancing songs with wide swaths of technologies—synths, drum machines, vocal manipulators, etc. "We do have a fascination for technology," said Brundtland. "We have lived with the changes in music and tech throughout the years. For us, [technology] is like a good pencil. We don't express technology through music, it's more that it's the best pencil we could find."

"There's something very fragile about voices that are not man made," the artists added. "By playing with the syllables of the pre-programmed or pre-recorded words, we can make a robot say things it shouldn't say."

The musicians spoke about how title track "Do It Again," was an accidental pop song, as well as how "Inside The Idle Hour Club," is about both a condition and a place. The album ranges from dreamy ballads, to club-ready bangers. Do It Again may have a consistent soul, but it traverses a variety of emotions and energies that fit with both the party, and the solemn walk home from it. But even making sadder song like "Inside The Idle Hour Club" is still a celebratory experience for these talents. "We always dance when finish a song," said Robyn. "There's always a lot of movement for us."

Watch our documentary on how this awesome release developed from an experiment into a fleshed-out pop gem. While the collaboration between Röyksopp and Robyn may have been inevitable, we could not be more thankful it's out just in time for summer.

Stay tuned for more on Röyksopp and Robyn here on The Creators Project.