Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge are widely credited for making dance music that indie kids can groove to. Their last album Melody AM, and especially the hit singles ‘Poor Leno’ and ‘Eple’, saw the Norwegian duo heralded as the future of ‘intelligent’ dance. Unfortunately, follow-up The Understanding sees them treading water in a pool of rather colourless pseudo-trance muzak that’s proof positive that too much time spent in dark studios isn’t good for you.
The fact that one of the tracks is called '49 Percent’ is an ill omen, as the Bergen two seem to operate only at half speed for the majority of this collection. Album opener ‘Triumphant’ is another unfortunate choice of title, a mid-paced affair that’s not half bad but doesn’t approach anything like a triumph.
New vocalist Kate Havnevik lends her impressive tonsils to the more immediate ‘Only This Moment’, but it suffers from some dodgy '80s-style production effects that spoil an otherwise decent song.
‘Follow My Ruin’ is soul-less electronica-lite, which could almost be a Brand New Heavies cover. ‘Dead To The World’ and ‘Circuit Breaker’, meanwhile, sound like the kind of tunes Brandtland and Berge could compose in their sleep.
The suspenseful ‘Boys' and the epic, eight-minute ‘Alpha Male’ are two of the few high points, the latter a stompingly insistent hip-hop floor-filler, which eventually gives way to some otherworldly esoterica. The Knife’s Karin Dreijer comes over all Bjork-like on the reasonably impressive ‘What Else Is There?', an interesting contrast of Dreijer’s glacial vocals and Röyksopp’s warm arrangement.
The Understanding isn’t a complete waste of time. It’s just that after their previous output, this listener expected much, much more than middle-of-the-road coffee table chillout music.
Instead of soundtracking legendary club nights, The Understanding is far more likely to provide the accompaniment to a myriad of middle class dinner parties. A shame, considering we know they’re capable of so much more.