Transmission from our future
Röyksopp makes contact in Nebulous Nights
Your ship enters a new galaxy as sparkling lights of the nebula enwrap your capsule in a rainbow glow. Outside the panoramic window, you see a blinding caleidoscope of cosmic lights. A longing spontaneously rises in your soul for a planet once known as Earth, many thousand years ago. This feeling sparks a transmission of waves across space and time to your pre-incarnations of many lifetimes past. Your message is a revelation of the entirety of bliss and pain of humanity over the last several thousand years — a story of beauty and grace, of loss and love.
Your message propagates through space faster than light, piercing the white noise of a universal subconscious. Your signal flows through the ether like galactic honey made of stars.
Millenia ago, our today, a Norwegian electronic duo intercepts your transmission and channels it into an album: Nebulous Nights.
If anything was coming close to Carl Sagan’s Contact in real life, this is it. In its latest work, Röyksopp invokes the timeless, deepest collective subconscious of all sentient beings of the universe through the language of ambient sound:
This place is not unfamiliar to me. It resonated with the echoes of my past — a sanctuary where I had once dwelled.
Electronic avant-garde
Nebulous Nights must have taken guts. It frees listeners to discover something new beyond a neverending, self-contained loop of music streaming that keeps biting itself in its tail.
The duo interweaves multiple existential themes with sounds that span electronic music generations. The sound design alone is the avant-garde. Laid bare from traditional music structure, it reveals the deeper contemplation behind Röyksopp’s trilogy Profound Mysteries.
This work came a long way from Eple, Remind Me, and What Else is There?. If The Inevitable End was a rite of passage, then Nebulous Nights is what lingers beyond: the fading echoes of our memory after death.
Nebulous Nights is a tribute to the band’s expansive background in electronic music. It’s a glimpse of Röyksopp’s inspiration, their stories, impressions, and experiences. One cannot help but notice Röyksopp’s obsession and deep understanding of mystery, magick, and transcendence underneath it all.
Cosmic revelation
Like the tightrope walker in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nebulous Nights marks a desired milestone in humanity’s transition from complacency to transcendence.
A spark of divine inspiration or madness, Nebulous Nights fluctuates between deep existential themes and disorientation. Such revelations can be a sanctuary for some and exposing to others. This passage feels like a fever dream from Philip K. Dick’s notebook:
He leaned in closer, expecting to identify the source of the sounds, but no one was to be seen. “Trickster!” he yelled, hoping someone would reveal themselves, but no one answered.
Listen at your own risk. However, you do not have to go alone. Early on, in The Uxtáca Bridge we are introduced to a guide for this journey.
Tongue-tied, I stood before him, puzzled and entranced by his presence. “I am he who came before,” said the man, his gaze drifting to the horizon. “Would you care to accompany me on a journey through the realms of the unseen?”
If there were a score for Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker, this would be it.
I’m There With You is a story of loss which creates a deep, intimate connection between our humanity, love, and the universe:
I can still feel her. Her warmth lingering in the air. Though she’s gone, she remains etched in every corner of my soul.
Reaching For Secrets takes this idea further. There is a revelation in the most minor details of our lives, in every moment, which gives us a hint why we are here:
I often ponder the enigmatic depths of the universe. To me, mysteries are not obstacles but invitations to exploration. In my musings, I see the universe as a grand puzzle, each piece holding the promise of revelation
We must go on this journey with courage and not be swayed by dogma and ready-made, quickly digestible messages in instant noodle-type ‘religions’.
Ultimately, the believer denies himself the potential for a deeper understanding and intellectual growth. Superstition revolves around doctrine, which prioritises superstitious beliefs over rationality and evidence: an approach beyond reason, leading to harmful behaviour and irrational decision-making, impacting not only the individual but society as a whole.
Brainwaves as sound
Like brainwaves, Nebulous Nights is woven with multiple layers of vaporised synths, melodies encircling a downtempo rhythm, distant whispers, and pulsating drones. If we had made contact with another species in the universe, it might have sounded like this.
Built on the shoulders of giants such as The Orb, Aphex Twin, and Brian Eno, this album is forging a new trail on the electronic music frontier. Röyksopp is playing with the idea that modern electronic music became; we hear a preacher’s voice proclaim:
Brothers and sisters, I heard yesterday, these newcomers, they will not think. They lack the understanding, the ability. They cannot conjure up the same kind of magic. And so, it is up to us to carry the torch: for if not us, who? Are we to squander away their legacy, to let it be forgotten? No! That is not the way!
Nebulous Nights is an authentic tribute to the fans and hints at the genuinely profound understanding behind Röyksopp’s music.
I was granted a vision. It unfolded with clarity and purpose, like a pristine stream flowing down from the heights of the mountain.