Sigur Ros
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Gobbledigook A Sigur Ros music video for the song "Gobbledigook." |
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HEIMA A Sigur Ros music video for the song "Heima." |
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HEIMA Trailer A brief look at Sigur Ros and a the inspiration behind Heima |
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Sigur Ros Live in Concert Sigur Ros performance as featured on the Heima DVD |
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Von A Sigur Ros music video for the song "Von." |
Exclusive Interview: Eleven Questions with Sigur Ros
The film title HEIMA translated into English means HOME or HOMELAND. Your homeland is like no other, Iceland is a world of contradictions living in harmony - it's dark & light, cold but made of heat, delicate yet violent, magical and so grounded in history. Do you think that all these elements play a part in the music and art that comes out of Iceland?
I think wherever you are from the landscape will inevitably seep Into your output as an artist, whether you are an Italian opera singer, a Nigerian highlife guitarist, or a Japanese film director. Any connection between the topography of Iceland and our music is entirely accidental and implicit. I suppose HEIMA was our attempt to identify and lay to rest this longheld supposition.
The director of HEIMA, Dean DeBlois, also directed the animated film LILO & STITCH. How did the collaboration with Dean on HEIMA come about?
Dean approached us at a Hollywood bowl show a few years back, wanting to make a video clip for us. He wasn't on board from the word 'go' with HEIMA, but when we started to edit what we'd shot With an Icelandic crew we realized we didn't have a narrative shape oo our film, and our minds went back to Dean, who we knew had been Head of Story at Disney and therefore might know a thing or two about shaping a story. We asked him to rescue our film and he watched what we'd shot and told us what was missing. Together we filled in the blanks.
The cinematography in HEIMA is astounding - how much of that is just capturing the intense natural beauty of Iceland, or the director/cinematographer just really understanding it?
Not to denigrate our talented cinematographers, but where we were filming in Iceland you could literally point the camera in any given direction and film an astounding shot. Even we were surprised by some of the amazing places we fetched up.
Was there one place, one show were you felt most connected to Iceland and its people?
We all really liked the show in Seydisfjordur in the East Fjords, because the whole town was swathed in cold fog and we'd just come down from filming in the bright sunshine in the highland wilderness at a miniscule dam protest camp. That aside, the last gig at Asbyrgi was also memorable, since that was the original place that inspired us to do the Icelandic tour in the first place. It's a crazy big canyon that was carved in a single afternoon 15,000 years ago by a huge damburst of water from a glacial volcano, and is a very mystical place.
How would you say the new album Me su Ì eyrum vi spilum endalaust (which translated into English means With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly) differs from your previous releases?
It's fast and it's fun. At least that's how it was made. If the previous records were meticulously picked over paintings, this one is a snapshot
The song All Right on Me su Ì eyrum vi spilum endalaust is the first song Sigur Ros recorded in English - what made you decided to do a song in English now?
Jonsi tried a few lyrics in English but this was the only one that really stuck. His boyfriend is american, so Jonsi tends to speak English about half the time, so it has become more natural for him to write in English, rather than some kind of compromise.
You recently recorded with an orchestra and boys choir at Abbey Road Studios in London - what lead you there and how was that experience?
It was a great but stressful day. The idea was to record everything together in one go with no overdubs. Most people record the band, then record the orchestra, then record the choir and then paste it all together. We did it the harder way and did it five or six times before we got everything in its right place. The feel of the music is probably better because of that, but I think Kjartan (who did the orchestral arrangement) needed a day in bed afterwards just to get over it.
I heard a statistic that up to 70 percent of the population in Iceland believes in elves and trolls ñ is that true and is Sigur Ros in that 70 percent?
We keep our beliefs in this regard close to our chest.
What bands/artists are you currently listening to and do you download music from iTunes?
Yes, we download music from i-tunes. We like Washington Phillips, Arvo Part, Thomas Tallis, Alice Cooper, Prince and Panda Bear
You recently played a free show in Reykjavik with Bjork to raise awareness of environmental issues in Iceland. Iceland always seemed to be so aware and pristine - what major issues are you dealing with?
There's very little industry in Iceland, especially with the decline of the fishing industry. We have cheap power because of geo-thermal and hydro-electric energy and one of things that has been done is the building of dams to power aluminum processing plants. These flood vast areas of pristine wilderness, changing the landscape forever. The bauxite ore comes in from Africa, the power stations are built by cheap imported labour and the plants are owned by us corporations. So little stays in Iceland. It's short term-ism of the worst kind. The Nattura concert in Reykjavik was to stimulate debate about finding alternative land use in Iceland.
Have any of you had experiences with Brennivin (Icelandic Schnapps) that we can print and how would you describe it to someone?
BLACK DEATH.
I think wherever you are from the landscape will inevitably seep Into your output as an artist, whether you are an Italian opera singer, a Nigerian highlife guitarist, or a Japanese film director. Any connection between the topography of Iceland and our music is entirely accidental and implicit. I suppose HEIMA was our attempt to identify and lay to rest this longheld supposition.
The director of HEIMA, Dean DeBlois, also directed the animated film LILO & STITCH. How did the collaboration with Dean on HEIMA come about?
Dean approached us at a Hollywood bowl show a few years back, wanting to make a video clip for us. He wasn't on board from the word 'go' with HEIMA, but when we started to edit what we'd shot With an Icelandic crew we realized we didn't have a narrative shape oo our film, and our minds went back to Dean, who we knew had been Head of Story at Disney and therefore might know a thing or two about shaping a story. We asked him to rescue our film and he watched what we'd shot and told us what was missing. Together we filled in the blanks.
The cinematography in HEIMA is astounding - how much of that is just capturing the intense natural beauty of Iceland, or the director/cinematographer just really understanding it?
Not to denigrate our talented cinematographers, but where we were filming in Iceland you could literally point the camera in any given direction and film an astounding shot. Even we were surprised by some of the amazing places we fetched up.
Was there one place, one show were you felt most connected to Iceland and its people?
We all really liked the show in Seydisfjordur in the East Fjords, because the whole town was swathed in cold fog and we'd just come down from filming in the bright sunshine in the highland wilderness at a miniscule dam protest camp. That aside, the last gig at Asbyrgi was also memorable, since that was the original place that inspired us to do the Icelandic tour in the first place. It's a crazy big canyon that was carved in a single afternoon 15,000 years ago by a huge damburst of water from a glacial volcano, and is a very mystical place.
How would you say the new album Me su Ì eyrum vi spilum endalaust (which translated into English means With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly) differs from your previous releases?
It's fast and it's fun. At least that's how it was made. If the previous records were meticulously picked over paintings, this one is a snapshot
The song All Right on Me su Ì eyrum vi spilum endalaust is the first song Sigur Ros recorded in English - what made you decided to do a song in English now?
Jonsi tried a few lyrics in English but this was the only one that really stuck. His boyfriend is american, so Jonsi tends to speak English about half the time, so it has become more natural for him to write in English, rather than some kind of compromise.
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You recently recorded with an orchestra and boys choir at Abbey Road Studios in London - what lead you there and how was that experience?
It was a great but stressful day. The idea was to record everything together in one go with no overdubs. Most people record the band, then record the orchestra, then record the choir and then paste it all together. We did it the harder way and did it five or six times before we got everything in its right place. The feel of the music is probably better because of that, but I think Kjartan (who did the orchestral arrangement) needed a day in bed afterwards just to get over it.
I heard a statistic that up to 70 percent of the population in Iceland believes in elves and trolls ñ is that true and is Sigur Ros in that 70 percent?
We keep our beliefs in this regard close to our chest.
What bands/artists are you currently listening to and do you download music from iTunes?
Yes, we download music from i-tunes. We like Washington Phillips, Arvo Part, Thomas Tallis, Alice Cooper, Prince and Panda Bear
You recently played a free show in Reykjavik with Bjork to raise awareness of environmental issues in Iceland. Iceland always seemed to be so aware and pristine - what major issues are you dealing with?
There's very little industry in Iceland, especially with the decline of the fishing industry. We have cheap power because of geo-thermal and hydro-electric energy and one of things that has been done is the building of dams to power aluminum processing plants. These flood vast areas of pristine wilderness, changing the landscape forever. The bauxite ore comes in from Africa, the power stations are built by cheap imported labour and the plants are owned by us corporations. So little stays in Iceland. It's short term-ism of the worst kind. The Nattura concert in Reykjavik was to stimulate debate about finding alternative land use in Iceland.
Have any of you had experiences with Brennivin (Icelandic Schnapps) that we can print and how would you describe it to someone?
BLACK DEATH.
FOCUSAs their native Icelandic terrain would mirror, Sigur Ros are indefinable. Breathless, sharp, mystical, beautiful, dark, light, versatile, powerful, heart-wrenching...they have harnessed the immense power of their surroundings to change how music is played and heard. Sigur Ros bring their post-rock ethereal soundscapes to record and film, inspiring new audiences everyday.
BIOAccording to Sigur Rós frontman Jón "Jónsi" Þór Birgisson, his band's fifth album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, was directed by two watchwords: "fast" and "fun" - not perhaps the first adjectives one would pluck to describe the oeuvre of Iceland's most celebrated ensemble to a passing Martian. Both prove axiomatic, however, on a record which exudes nape-hair-tingling joie de vivre in equal proportion to exquisite fragility and, most familiarly to longtime SR fans, soaring transcendence. Indeed, while the latter characteristic has hallmarked Sigur Rós records since Von, their 1997, fx pedal saturated debut opus, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust marks the culmination of an evolutionary cycle which finds the Reykjavik-based quartet carefully sidestepping stereotypical associations with their geologically epic homeland.
Of course, they'll never totally shake off the idiosyncrasy, magic and mystery of Iceland nor want to - and for all their refreshed exuberance, the 2008 vintage Sigur Rós can still purvey vertiginous symphonic beauty with a subtlety unmatched by any contemporary rock group. While poignant grandeur is a Sigur Rós given, the new album is notable for its embracing of songs which are approachably intimate, jubilant and, yes "fun". In short, Sigur Rós now 'do' summery as well as wintry, as bassist Georg Hólm attests. "On this album we were feeling really energetic. We were writing most of the stuff in the summertime as well... We've always written what in our opinion are 'happy' songs we've just not been able to articulate them properly before..."
The album title translates as 'With a buzz in our ear we play endlessly', yet there was nothing incessant about the album's recording indeed, the journey from initial New York studio sessions with producer Mark 'Flood' Ellis, to finished, mastered product was achieved in a remarkably concise five months; "fast" by anyone s standards. Lessons we're clearly learned in the summer of 2006 during which Sigur Rós played a miscellany of spontaneous shows across Iceland including their first ever without electricity - the results captured in the beguiling 2007 film/DVD HEIMA, (a movie which "takes the hood off just four nerds" according to Jónsi) and on the accompanying live/acoustic album, Hvarf-Heim. "The interesting thing was discovering that they were actually songs, that there was a song structure there..." Georg admits, remembering the first time the band played without amplifiers or effects. The energy and nakedness of those 'unplugged' performances impacted heavily on the new album. "We wrote a lot of the songs acoustically then swapped over to other instruments later, sometimes keeping a mixture of acoustic and electric."
Með suð… is the first Sigur Rós album to have been ostensibly captured outside Iceland; some of Jónsi's characteristically chorister-like vocals were recorded at Egrem studios in exotic Havana, Cuba, a locale chosen when the dark Northern winter proved that bit oppressive. The record opens a very long way from February gloom with the joyously thumping clarion call that is 'Gobbledigook' (a mischievous handle which nods knowingly to Jónsi s long-abandoned predilection for singing in the invented language once dubbed 'Hopelandic' ) and ends with the devastatingly tender, brass-caressed nocturne 'All Alright', the first ever Sigur Rós song delivered in English.
Q magazine recently opined that with Með suð Sigur Rós have now, "outgrown their cult status". The ever-modest Georg Hólm thinks they re still only halfway to full refurbishment. The record, he reckons, has "... one foot in this new territory but we re not all the way over yet. Maybe next time..."
Stay tuned to Sigur Rós. They may have just made their most gloriously accessible record to date but the "fun" , it seems, has only just begun.