Nº 176 • October 2011 • €3,60 / $4.90
Winter Songs
337680467900003
Music from Iceland
Bjork • Tappi Tíkarrass • Two Tricky The Sugarcubes • Sigur Rós Múm • Nyllon • Stjórnin • August & Telma
SIGUR RÓS
Are Iceland’s Sigur Rós the saviors of 21st-century rock or true heirs to the silkrobed-and-platform-booted, pompous progressive rock of the ‘70s? Sigur Rós are an icelandic post-rock band. The name is derived from the name of lead singer Jónsi Birgisson’s little sister, Sigurrós. They hail from the same creative and vibrant Icelandic music scene as múm and Amiina. They released their first ever foray into film-making with their tour documentary, Heima in late 2007. Jón Þór Birgisson (Jónsi), Georg Hólm, and Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson formed the group in Reykjavík, Iceland in August 1994. They soon won a record deal with a local record label, Smekkleysa (Bad Taste). In 1997, they released Von (Hope) and in 1998, released a remix collection named Von Brigði. The name is Icelandic wordplay: Vonbrigði means “disappointment,” but Von brigði means “hope alteration.” (In English, the album is sometimes known by the alternative name “Recycle Bin.”) International acclaim came with 1999’s Ágætis byrjun (“An alright start”), for which the band were joined by Kjartan Sveinsson. The album’s reputation slowly spread by word of mouth over the next two years. Soon, many critics worldwide hailed it as one of the best albums of its time and the band was playing with Radiohead and other big names. Drummer Ágúst left the band after the recording of Ágætis Byrjun and was replaced by Orri Páll Dýrason. After the release of Ágætis Byrjun, the band became perhaps most well known for Birgisson’s signature style of playing guitar with the bow from a cello, accentuated with reverb, creating a sweeping, fluid sound that is unique for an electric guitar.
SIGUR RÓS
Volenska Vonlenska is a term used to describe the unintelligible lyrics sung by the band,[28] in particular by Jón Þór Birgisson. It is also commonly known by the English translation of its name, Hopelandic. It takes its name from “Von”, a song on Sigur Rós’s debut album Von where it was first used. Vonlenska is a non-literal language, without fixed syntax, and differs from constructed languages that can be used for communication. It focuses entirely on the sounds of language; lacking grammar, meaning, and even distinct words. Instead, it consists of emotive non-lexical vocables and phonemes; Vonlenska uses the melodic and rhythmic elements of singing without the conceptual content of language. In this way, it is similar to the use of scat singing in vocal jazz. The band’s website describes it as “a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music”; it is similar in concept to the ‘nonsense’ language often used by the Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of the syllable strings sung by Jón Þór Birgisson are repeated many times throughout each song, and in the case of “( )”, throughout the whole album. takk…, the fourth album from sigur rós, was released by emi records on september 12. written, performed and produced by the band (along with co-producer ken thomas) at their studio in álafoss, iceland, ‘takk…’ is the record to justify every amazing claim ever laid at this exceptional band’s door. Huge and intimate, orchestral and gossamer-light, rich layered and essentially simple, ‘takk…’ is a work of a band operating at the very top of their game. it accomplishes what maybe they haven’t done since they first appeared, which is to make high-flown ideas appear to be straight ahead pop music, or, perhaps more accurately, invest pop music with a sense of magic long since lost in the mists of time and imagination (not that they sound anything like any music made back in any mythical musical heyday). ‘takk…’ seems to operate so far outside the confines of what else is going on as to make comparison redundant. that the band were not going to be held by any narrow categorisation was apparent from the off. that they might be capable of creativity at this level of freedom and imagination was more than any of us might ever have hoped for. ‘takk…’ is an instant classic, and might well turn out to be sigur rós’s masterpiece. Pop music with a sense of magic long since lost in the mists of time and imagination
MUST LISTEN
1 takk... 2 glósóli 3 hoppípolla 4 með blóðnasir 5 sé lest 6 sæglópur 7 mílanó 8 gong andvari 9 svo hljótt 10 heysátan
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MÚM
“We didn’t know what múm meant in English when we chose the name, It just sounds nice”. And so does their music: Iceland’s organic quartet Mum fishes for sounds in unlikely places.
Orvar Poreyjarson Smarason stands in at the foot of a driveway in suburban New York, staring at the van in which his band, Mum, is about to crisscross America for the first time. He is fretting that the vehicle - fat with accordion, glockenspiel, Wurlitzer and laptops- will be unable to accommodate the group’s cello. never mind the group’s cellist. The Icelandic band, has surmounted far 14 more tangled transport puzzles in the past. For one thing, Smarason and his girlfriend, singer Kristin Anna Valtysdottir, recently moved to Berlin, commuting to their native Reykjavik for band practice. And this band practices in some unconventional garages. “We had a lot of idea for our album,” Smarason says of the new Finally We are No One, the band’s second. “So we went to a lighthouse to finalize work on it. We used a helicopter to fly our equipment over.” But upon returning from the lighthouse, “We had to pass [the instruments] to drunken sailors and send them out in a finishing boat,” adds Valtysdottir, her head flopped affectionately a top her bandmate’s shoulder. But perhaps the most prominent recurring sound in Mum’s gently melancholic universe is that of trickled liquids, as if those tipsy sailors let the sea into the
band’s gear. “We have always drawn a lot of our samples from the natural world,” says Gunnar Orn Tynes, who was playing music for a children’s theatrical production along with Smarason when they first joined the Valtysdottir twins. “The lighthouse had a big effect on how we recorded this album, so it made a lot of sense to drum our fingers on the water, or band on a [submerged] pan, for percussion. In fact, two new songs, “Behind Two Hills...A Swimming Pool” and “Faraway Swimming Pool,” were recorded specifically for underwater listening sessions. The songs - which sound something like Brian Eno scoring A.I - are a result of the band’s experiments which “swimming pool concerts” for which Mm and other musicians convinced the city of Reykjavik to purchase
“We have always drawn a lot of our samples from the natural world,” Gunnar Orn Tynes
Múm
underwater speakers, then performed shows in which listeners could hear the music only while swimming. “Music sounds differently in the water,” Smarason says, “It doesn’t have a lot of bass, but it is very clear. If you swim away from the speaker, the sound is just as strong as if you’re close to it. We tried to capture that feeling on the album, making frequencies that are extremely shimmering in the water.” While the NEA is unlikely to bedeck our nation’s pools with underwater speakers, the band’s New York debut finds Mum playing the Brooklyn Lyceum, a renovated bathhouse where the quartet will improvise to Battleship Potemkin, the 1925 film by Sergei Eisenstein. Finally We Are No On glimmers as a majestically picturesque beacon, in liquid on land.
LIVE Like their fellow Icelanders, Bjork and the Sigur Ros, Mum are sensitive to the poetry of light and space. The first piece of the night ran for nearly fifteen minutes through a library of delicate changes: Chattering-insect rhythm clicks and the faint hum of an organ; single marimba notes dotting the low moan of a cello; the gently mounting drums of guest member Adam Pierce (from the band Mice Parade), putting just the right amount of surge into the suspense. In “Smell Memory,” from the Yesterday album, the implied locomotion of chopped-up static and a chirping sequencer bloomed the golden stutter of a sampled hammer dulcimer. And Mum emphasized their gift for melody in the Finally single, “Green Grass of Tunnel”; the entire piece is a single ascending sequence decked out in counterpoint keyboards and female whisper. At heart, Mum are really a pop group, building a gorgeous, sturdy music from sweet and tender materials. It’s not that you can’t dance to the results; a warm shiver of pleasure just seems more appropriate.
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MUST LISTEN Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know, Múm’s fifth album continues pretty much where Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy left off. Very much like with its predecessor, Múm draw from a multitude of instruments (guitars, prepared piano, ukulele, marimba, strings, dulcimer) to create a beautiful and evocative layered sounds where sub melodies constantly add to the core structure of a piece, occasionally highlighting a point or giving out a vivid glow to a particular melody or instrument. The album starts with the surrealist and poetic If I Were A Fish, on which the band create a warm campfire song feel and juxtapose brushes of slide guitars and earthy brass slabs. Later, A River Don’t Stop To Breathe, Illuminated or Blow Your Nose make beautiful use of the string quartet by giving it a central place, especially on the latter, adding delicate marimbas and piano touches to accentuate the pastoral feel of the respective pieces. Prophecies And Reversed Memories or the magnificent Húllabbalabbalúú and Kay-Ray-Kú-Kú-Kó-Kex are pivotal moments on this record, the former signalling a momentary change of pace, the latter two, with their underwhelming rolling anthemic melodic themes never cease to grow through their respective courses. Although very different, these three songs seem to focalize the cinematic breadth of Múm like never before.
1 if i were a fish 2 sing along 3 prophecies & reversed memories 4 a river don’t stop to breathe 5 the smell of today is sweet like breastmilk in the wind 6 show me 7 hullaballabalú 8 blow your nose 9 kay-ray-ku-ku-ko-kex 10 last shapes of never 11 illuminated 12 ladies of the new century