Rich Douglas When Sigur Ros first appeared on British shores they managed to bring with them a sound that was unmistakably that of Iceland. Now it is the turn of the Norwegians to share their homeland with us, in the form of this ambient package. Though Kings of Convenience may have brought attention back to that corner of Scandinavia in the last year, they did not quite capture the natural feel of the snow, forests and fjords in the same manner, soft and touching though their debut was. With Melody A.M., Royksopp seem to have found the perfect soundtrack to a winter wonderland, full of warmth and vibrancy within, but also possessing a haunting awareness of the frost lying outside. At a time when chill-out music is apparently the way to go, these two Norwegians seem to have timed their arrival to perfection. Similar to Air and Groove Armada, Svein Berge and Torbjorn Brundtland's ambient tinklings wash over you in funky tides, taking you as far from a bleak mid-winter in Oxford as you could possibly wish to be. The title of the opening track, 'So Easy' says it all as they competently and effortlessly weave their way from its shoe-shufflingly cool funk, through the lightly chilled house of recent single 'Poor Leno' with haunting guest vocals by Kings of Convenience's own Erlend Oye, to the claustrophobic and incessant rumblings of 'Royksopp's Night Out'; a song to walk down the street nodding your head to if ever there was one. Indeed, as the occasional bursts of synths shoot across your consciousness you can almost see the northern lights doing the same across the horizon of the frozen Norwegian countryside. Similarly the trickling and chiming keyboard lines on 'Eple' instantly transport you to the flowing fjords, and it is this distinctively natural feel which lends the album as a whole a distinct advantage over its competitors. For all the cheerful cheekiness of 'Sexy Boy', Air have not really reached the same natural and genuinely emotive heights as passages of Melody A.M. do. That said of course, there are times when things do veer that little bit too far towards tried and tested ambient paths and it has been known for attention to wane at these points. Indeed, as anyone with a vague knowledge of Air will be able to recognise, there is even the customary track which has clearly been made for an oh-so-slick porn movie in 'She's So'. But, despite such quibbles Melody A.M. remains one of the most impressive debuts of its type for years, though whether they manage to stop Mum going to Iceland and get her over to Norway instead remains to be seen.