Röyksopp at Shepherd’s Bush Empire
There’ll be a more professional review of this Röyksopp gig for Sonic Dice (alongside some words about support act James Yuill), but I’ll write some words about it here too. It’s worth saying that this gig was pretty phenomenal. When I was looking down at the crowd from my seating position, which was the side pocket of level 1, I noticed it wasn’t an overly youthful crowd. It struck me as a bit odd but I found that they were all destined to have a good time as Röyksopp came onto the stage at around 9:15pm.
In terms of performance, the Norwegian duo gave it all they got. Even though most of their time was spent behind their synths they were vibrant and energetic. Torbjørn Brundtland, dressed in what looked like pyjamas from a distance, and Svein Berge, who came onstage wearing an astronaut helmet for the first song and wore a robot costume for a few songs towards the end of the main set, have also recruited a live bassist to enhance their sound. It worked really well and it became an integral part of the live sound. Anneli Drecker contributed vocals to fill the gaps left by the absence of Lykke Li and Karin Dreijer and was very good all evening. The big surprise was when Robyn made an appearance to reprise her singing role for The Girl And The Robot, which has grown to be one of my favourite Röyksopp songs.
Sound at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire is always spot on and tonight was no exception. Every beat, melody, and bassline was heard perfectly. The show itself was relatively simple - just a simple backdrop of a picture of speakers, a few lights but not a huge amount. In a way this drew my attention to the people on stage, and they were all fully enjoying their gig. Svein Berge in particular was leaping around the stages either singing, bashing a cymbal, playing synths, or possibly all of them at the same time.
And then there’s the setlist. Usually when bands play a set that is mostly based on fan favourites it can be quite frustrating for older fans, but because the Röyksopp back catalogue is brimming with quality songs, this feeling subsides. The opener of Röyksopp Forever was spine-tingling, Happy Up Here got a huge reaction early on in the set, Tricky Tricky was frantic, The Girl And The Robot was euphoric, yet it was the much older cuts of Eple, Remind Me, and Poor Leno, that really got the crowd going. My personal feeling was that had they added Röyksopp’s Night Out it would have been a perfect setlist, but it’s hard to complain when they do two encores really.
So, overall feelings? Definitely a contender for gig of the year. I swear I heard Torbjørn say they’ll back in September, which makes sense since they have their next album, Senior, coming out next year. Go and see them as soon as possible for a fun night out.
The setlist:
Röyksopp Forever
This Must Be It
Remind Me
Happy Up Here
Tricky Tricky
Alpha Male
You Don’t Have A Clue
I Wanna Know
The Girl And The Robot
Eple
What Else Is There?
Only This Moment
So Easy
Poor Leno
Fat Burner
For more of my photos from Level 1, go to my Flickr. To go to photos straight from the photo pit, check out Crazybobbles’ photos.
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Posted on November 6th, 2009 by Max
Filed under: Gigs, Reviews
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