Sigur Rós #3 - Ára Bátur

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something for 2009
at the two shows in london last month (20th + 21st) some people noticed a lot of cameras busily recording away.

we can now confirm that the shows were indeed recorded and pass on a bit more information on this. the shoot was directed by acclaimed director vincent morisset, who also shot the “neon bible” interactive video for arcade fire. the footage is currently being edited in montreal and promises to be a nice contrast to “heima“, which had a lot of links to context, time and surroundings, whereas this forthcoming concert footage will be purely performance-based.

as is fairly common in sigur rós land, it will be released when it’s ready and, as such, we dont have any ideas of release dates - but we’re looking forward to it already.

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Op woensdag 31 december 2008 00:26 schreef C.Obvious het volgende:
Een geweldige band dit, vond ze op lowlands super maar helaas het HMH concert gemist.
Vandaag ook Heima gekocht, daar ga ik morgen maar eens goed voor zitten om em te bekijken

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Op woensdag 31 december 2008 12:23 schreef Angel_of_Dth het volgende:
Ik ga Heima binnenkort ook maar eens bestellen. Cdwow heeft die vast ook wel voor weinig.

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SOLOPLAAT VOOR SIGUR ROS VOORMAN (1)

donderdag 9 april 2009 om 11:31
Jon maakt album als Riceboy Sleeps

Jón Þór Birgisson, de voorman van de IJslandse groep Sigur Ros, brengt deze zomer een album uit zonder de rest van zijn band. Maar niet helemaal in zijn eentje: zijn artistieke partner, Alex Somers, is wel bij het project betrokken.

Riceboy Sleeps
Alex en Jon treden al een tijdje op onder de naam Riceboy Sleeps – optredens waarbij een expositie en muziek worden gecombineerd. Nu wordt hun gezamelijk werk uitgebracht op een album onder dezelfde naam.

Gewoon Engels
De plaat bevat 9 liedjes (waarvan 8 in gewoon, begrijpelijk Engels!) en komt op 20 juli uit.

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Sigur Ros singer Jón Þór Birgisson and his boyfriend Alex Somers are to release an album together this summer.

Titled 'Riceboy Sleeps', the long-player will be released through Parlophone Records on July 20. The name derives from the moniker Birgisson and Somers used for joint art projects over the past three years.

The first fruits of their musical collaboration surfaced on the Dark Was The Night compilation earlier this year with the plaintive track 'Happiness'.

Recorded in Birgisson's native Iceland solely on acoustic instruments, 'Ricboy Sleeps' is a nine-track record that also features strings from Sigur Ros' long-term collaborators Amiina and the Kopavogsdaetur choir.

The full track-listing is as follows:

Happiness
Atlas Song
Indian Summer
Stokkseyri
Boy 1904
All The Big Trees
Daníell In The Sea
Howl
Sleeping Giant

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Op vrijdag 10 april 2009 14:37 schreef dutchie88 het volgende:
Het bovenste bericht klopt dus niet, ik lees net hier dat het hele album instrumentaal zal zijn. En dat lijkt te kloppen want de drie nummers die al uit zijn (Daníell In The Sea, All The Big Trees en Happiness), zijn allemaal instrumentaal. Geen hakkelend Engels dus.

Sigur Ros-All Alright

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Op woensdag 20 augustus 2008 13:16 schreef Gubbe85 het volgende:
tvp

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new album near completion
sigur rós have certainly been keeping busy lately. in addition to the riceboy sleeps album, jónsi’s solo album and kjartan’s ondine soundtrack, sigur rós have been at work in their sundlaugin studio in álafoss the past few weeks recording a full length album, which is now nearing completion. orri told morgunblaðið newspaper today that the recordings have been going very well and that the album is taking form as a slower and more ambient record than með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust and takk…. he also describes the music as melodic but much less noisy and more “out there” than previous albums. the album does not have a release date set but is expected to be released sometime next year.

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Op zaterdag 30 mei 2009 11:18 schreef conobram het volgende:
2010 weer op Lowlands?

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Op zaterdag 6 juni 2009 22:42 schreef Snotboebel het volgende:
Leuke band

In Brussel spelen ze samen met EF ---> SUPERBAND !! Zelfde genre als For a Minor Reflection maar veel beter vind ik!

http://www.myspace.com/ef


Mijn band http://www.myspace.com/substraction maakt ook iets dat in dat genre ligt (hoewel nog net iets anders)

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Op zaterdag 6 juni 2009 23:49 schreef Newde het volgende:

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Ef is geniaal! Waarom kom ik hier nu pas achter!

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Op zondag 7 juni 2009 01:13 schreef Darkestrah het volgende:

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Newfag.

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Sigur Ros, in the first live session of its kind for the band, joined us in The Interface studios. Supporting their newest album Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust, the band played four songs: "Vid Spilum Endalaust", “Fljotavik", “Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur", and “Illgresi" Co-produced by the band and Flood (U2, Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey).

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Op vrijdag 19 juni 2009 23:16 schreef Roel_Jewel het volgende:
Beelden @ Sigur Rós - Live on The Interface
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To mark the 10th anniversary of the Icelandic release of their breakthrough album 'Agaetis Byrjun', Sigur Ros have made available two exclusive live performances from the original launch party concert at the Icelandic Opera House on the night of June 10, 1999 - back when few people outside Reykjavik hadn't the foggiest clue who they were.

Watch it here..


'Nyja Lagid' video - filmed originally for Icelandic TV and unseen for years, this shows the boys when they really were still boys, performing a song that never made it onto Agaetis Byrjun (or any subsequent album) and disappeared from their set-list shortly after this date. The film also records the last show by original drummer Gusti. The audio of this live recording was featured on Sigur Ros's first ex-Iceland release, the 'Svefn-G-Englar' EP.

Download 'Hafssol' here. (mailadres invullen)

'Hafssol' audio - a fascinatingly transitional rendition of the seminal 'Hafssol' (later 'Hafsol'), which has been one of the true survivors in the band's live show, having appeared in almost unrecognisably nebulous form on their debut album 'Von', and then gone through endless transmogrification year by year until its arrival on 2007's 'Hvarf/Heim' double pack. (If you follow the link above you can sign up to download the song.)
Hope you enjoy them both. They'll be further celebrations to mark the 10th anniversary of the release of 'Agaetis Byrjun' outside Iceland in due course, but we will of course let you know.

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"A yearning, almost devotional quality... file alongside Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden and Henryk Gorecki’s Third Symphony.” - Mojo

Jonsi & Alex's gorgeous 'Riceboy Sleeps' album will be released around the world the week of July 20, and you can get a free download of the track 'Boy 1904' right now by clicking here.
Several years in gestation, the Riceboy Sleeps project was first conceived as an outlet for Jonsi and his boyfriend Alex's visual art, resulting in the highly covetable 1,000 limited edition A6 book, printed in Iceland to highly exacting spec. Gallery shows and video installations followed, and with them the creation of the first dream-like soundscapes towards what would become this album.
Recorded at home in between Sigur Rós commitments, the music took shape slowly, and suffered a near fatal setback when the computer on which it was all stored was dragged from the kitchen table in the days before Apple had magnetic power leads. Fortunately some nifty and painstaking keyhole surgery effected during a sojourn in Hawaii resulted in complete recovery of the splendid specimen soon to be before you.
We will send you details of the different formats available in due course, but for now immerse yourself in 'Boy 1904', which features the buried treasure of the only known recording of the last ever castrato singer. No wonder this music seems beamed in from another time and place.
www.jonsiandalex.com

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Riceboy Sleeps - Sleeping Giants


Known primarily for his haunting falsetto and other-worldly presence as the singer in Sigur Rós, Jón Þór (Jónsi) Birgisson has - together with his partner Alex Somers - been exhibiting artwork and staging exhibitions under the name Riceboy Sleeps for two or three years now.

A couple of months back the early fruits of the musical side of this collaboration surfaced in physical form for the first time, with the track ‘Happiness’, on the exemplary ‘Dark Was The Night’ Red Hot compilation. Now the full-length ‘Riceboy Sleeps’ album is finished and ready for release.

‘Riceboy Sleeps’ is a 68-minute ambient odyssey, that embraces the cerebral and the human in equal measure. Played solely on acoustic instruments in Iceland (and featuring long-time Sigur Rós string collaborators Amiina, as well as the Kópavogsdætur choir) and then endlessly toyed with on solar-powered laptops in a raw food commune in some far corner of Hawaii, ‘Riceboy Sleeps’ has a suitably “organic feel” to it.

Alex - you’re known predominantly as a visual artist. How long have you been making music?
I’ve been making music for a long time, actually since before the visual stuff. I have been in bands since I was 15, mostly rock and roll bands, so making music and collaborating is not new for me. This is the first album I’ve released or published though…

When did you both get into “quieter” music?
Alex: When I was 18 or 19. I used to make music with my brother, which was always quieter. I immediately liked it. It felt somehow like it was my roots. If felt right to lose the pulse. Before Riceboy sleeps I’d been making stuff by myself at home, with good friends or again with my brother.

Jónsi: When I was young I used to put on ambient music. I used to listen to it intensely, it really did something for me. If I was feeling blue and sad it would actually soothe me. As you get older and more boring you tend to put it on and keep it in the background. The challenge for us was to make something quiet but still interesting. I was listening to [our album] recently and was surprised at how intense it is in places. It’s not like a pure ambient album. It’s not really all that relaxing sometimes.

Is this music is intimately tied up with your combined visual art aesthetic?
Alex: Definitely. They are one and the same for me. When Jónsi and I make photos or video projects, they come from exactly the same place as the songs. We’re always hoping to create the same kind of atmosphere.

When did the two of you first start making music?
Alex: We’ve been making music since we met in 2005, on and off. In fact we’ve been working on this project since then. We didn’t know we had an album until recently though. When we realized this, we took a month off and went to Hawaii to mix the album there.

And the whole album was recorded at your home in Reykjavik?
Alex: Yes, in our apartment we have all the instruments - harmonium, celeste, glockenspiels, piano, guitars…we wrote the whole thing on acoustic instruments.

Jonsi: It was really drawn out and involved time spent in our living room and kitchen. It was great.

How did the song-writing process work for this project?
Alex: Often the songs would grow from a sample or something, and just evolve. They very often became something else than they were intended to be. I personally like playing piano, guitar and harmonium. They are my three favourites. I also love the sampler, recording sounds and then playing with them and processing them.

Jónsi: We put in equal amounts. It was such a casual and lengthy project that no one can say what anyone else did. We had no deadline and no pressure. I would maybe fiddle around on a piano, then we’d leave it for half a year and then discover it and think “that sounds nice”. Some songs came quickly, some slowly. The last song, Sleeping Giant, took all five years and was one of the last songs that we finished.

Is the project influenced by any ‘ambient’ producers in particular, Eno for example?
Alex: Hm, nothing that I can think of. I personally think Eno is cool and I like his music. But really it was us doing our own thing. We never sit around listening to ambient music together or anything.

The album spans your entire relationship. Does it feel like some kind of personal archival document to you?
Alex: It is a bit like that. Most couples don’t get the opportunity to share their relationship in this way, and it sounds like the two of us at home to me for sure.

Jónsi: I think so too, but it needs more time to sink in. When you’ve just finished albums you want to get away from them. Only after some time can you think back to the special moments and atmospheres.

Some ambient albums are created electronically but this is way more acoustic
Alex: All the instruments were acoustic, and we added a string section and choir to help give it that feel. Sometimes with ambient bands it sounds too electronic. There’s mistakes here and it sounds rough in places. I mean we’re not the best engineers.

Jónsi - what crossovers were there between this project and your work with Sigur Rós?
There are always going to be parallels with music projects. It was a little bit like Sigur Rós sometimes in the working method and the way we slowed things down, reversed things and tweaked them. And of course we worked with amiina, the string quartet that play with Sigur Rós. You can’t help but have it be similar in some ways.

You went to the jungle in Hawaii to mix it all down. Why there?
Alex: We just wanted to go somewhere warm and to have some real undisturbed focus. We just took our laptops and speakers. Jónsi found out about a raw food community, like 12-15 people living together living off the land and using only solar power. So we had this small hut in the middle of the jungle and had dinners with these people from all over world and for all ages. It was a great way to finish an album. Sometimes we had the music up loud and it was quite amusing one evening to find this hippy lady called Humming Bird meditating outside our hut and making these spiritual comments…

Will you be doing anything live?
Jónsi: Maybe next year we will. It depends on the schedule. We’d want to do it with maybe a small string section or a choir, and of course some visual elements. We haven’t gotten that far yet though….

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Op zaterdag 1 augustus 2009 19:48 schreef Roel_Jewel het volgende:
http://www.icelandmusic.i(...)-Giants/default.aspx
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Op donderdag 28 mei 2009 23:13 schreef Roel_Jewel het volgende:
http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/news/?p=1313
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Op zaterdag 1 augustus 2009 12:14 schreef myxomatosekonijn het volgende:
Is iemand bereid(lees: zo gek om) zijn/haar deluxe versie aan mij te verkopen? Ik was tot een paar dagen terug op rondreis in IJsland , maar heb daardoor helaas achter het net gevist Daarentegen kwam ik dan wel weer een week geleden Jonsi zo maar tegen op straat in Reykjavik Dat is dan nog een kleine pleister op de wond

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Op woensdag 28 oktober 2009 12:07 schreef portie het volgende:
sigur ros under exclusive licence to EMI records Ltd.

+ een mooi rondje met schuin EMI erin. niks over XL