Those who recall Röyksopp from a decade ago as a chill-out act whose debut album, Melody AM, sold a million copies after their music featured on umpteen TV ads might be shocked by the band who now trade under the same name. The personnel haven’t changed — the Norwegian duo Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge still anchor the band, though guest singers come and go — but their coffee table beats have morphed into tough techno and electro and their once shy, on-stage behaviour has vanished in favour of dressing up as Darth Vader.

Released in the spring, Röyksopp’s third album, Junior, was one of this year’s least expected highlights — its predecessor, The Understanding (2005), was a commercial flop, despite moving the band into trendier territory. Junior found a halfway house between the easy-on-the-ear melodies of the duo’s debut and the stripped-down dance beats of its successor, but failed to spawn a hit single. At the Shepherds Bush Empire, however, the Norwegians had never sounded better.

From the moment they took to their raised platforms centre stage, behind keyboards, computers and drums, amid a sea of dry ice that eventually cleared to reveal a backdrop of a giant ghetto blaster, they were on a mission to make the mostly male audience move their feet.

Their quirky dress sense was borrowed from Daft Punk: Brundtland wore a camouflage coat and matching mask, Berge switched between a Darth Vader cape, spaceman’s helmet and stormtrooper bodysuit, while even their guitarist sported an outfit reminiscent of Robin Hood. As searchlights swept the stage, Anneli Drecker — a Cyndi Lauper lookalike — arrived to front This Must Be It, a brisk, percussion-driven electro-pop track from Junior. Even gentle instrumentals from Melody AM were given a clubby makeover — Remind Me was speeded up and featured robotic vocals, So Easy became a frequency-shifting, Chemical Brothers-style song, and Eple was turned into an epic mash-up of squelchy electro, hip-hop and disco.

The loudest applause was saved for the appearance of the Swedish pop star Robyn, who skipped on in leggings and a chiffon to perform the superb The Girl and the Robot and danced like a teen at her first school disco. Drecker made a dramatic reappearance under a shroud for a spooky What Else is There, before she and Robyn teamed up on Poor Leno. That Junior has failed to make any impact here this year is hard to understand.

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