Enigmatic Norwegian musical duo Royksopp are reluctant to explain themselves when it comes to their two new Profound Mysteries albums.

“Embrace the mystery,” insists Svein Berge. “We want so much with this concept, and there are so many ideas we’ve tried to bake into this, successfully or not.”

But they’re sharing a very personal experience. Ever since they were teenagers – growing up in remote Tromso on Norway’s northern coast, inside the Arctic Circle where the aurora burns the sky on long winter nights – they have been discussing their fascination and preoccupation with the “invisible” and the “impossible”, the most profound mysteries of life.

“When you’re young you think you’ll get answers”, says Torbjorn Brundtland, 47. “When you’re older, you embrace the mysteries more. It can be the very minute to the very existential, vast questions like the origins of the universe. We like to dwell and contemplate these things, it’s a nice kind of itch.”

Profound Mysteries, released in April, was their sixth studio album, the first since 2014’s The Inevitable End, which, at the time, they had called their last. Profound Mysteries II, just announced, is due in August.

“We wanted it to be more than just one album. We wanted it to be big,” says Berge, 46 (the pair often finish each other’s sentences). “We want so many things with this, because this questioning, the pondering, has stuck with us since we were kids. It’s one of the things that made us friends when we were kids.”

The itch has been scratched not just with music, but with art. Profound Mysteries I and II are the soundtrack to a multimedia conceptual project of short films and artwork, accessed through a “Profound Mysteries Portal” on their website.

Berge says they are all “equal parts of the Profound Mysteries universe”.