Saturday, September 24, 2005

Sigur Ros, Takk

I do not know where to begin, except to say, You already want this album, whether or not you know it.

Payday was Thursday and Fridays I have off, so I indulged my shopping-for-music jones, something I'd not done in quite a long time. And at Borders, I saw the new Sigur Ros album, Takk, on sale. All I knew about Sigur Ros is that they are from Iceland and my good blogosphere friend and all-around cosmopolitan Fearful Syzygy likes them. And anyone who shares my love of King Crimson and Arvo Part CANNOT be mistaken about music. So, I took a flyer, as they say. Before I left the parking lot, I unshrinkwrapped it and popped it into the CD player.

I can't convey what I heard, just yet, in any way that will do justice to this extraordinary music. So I'll just link instead to the video for "Glosoli." I don't know what the title means, but I'm perfectly happy to be in the throes of negative capability on this one. Watch. Be prepared not to be able to breathe for a while after it's over.

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UPDATE:
Here is a nice review of Takk by Peripathetic, with excerpts from interviews. Eighteen Seconds Before Sunrise is the band's official website.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a good album. As I was telling Raminagrobis, I felt it was a little predictably Sigur Rós-ish in places, but that doesn't make it bad necessarily, although I'm not a big fan of 'Mílanó'.

Everyone seems to be translating 'Glósóli' as 'glowing sun' which is wrong as that would be 'glósól'. 'Sóli' is the sole of a shoe, and a 'glósóli' would presumably be one that glows. The lyrics posted on alwaysontherun are completely wrong for the most part, by the way.

My favourite song on the album has to be 'Heysátan', which the journalist at Morgunblaðið (the main Icelandic newspaper) called 'undoubtedly the most beautiful song ever written about a tractor accident'.

Anyway, glad you like them. You should investigate the rest of their œuvre, at least Ágætis Byrjun and ( ). Von is only really for connoisseurs.

Anonymous said...

Me again.

As regards the video, I feel I should point out that, yes, Iceland does look like that for the most part, but no, Icelandic children don't dress like that (not any more, in any case).

I quite liked the video, but it's nowhere near as 'breathtaking' (to carry on with John's metaphor) as the video to Untitled #1 (aka Vaka), which is available here (along with a whole host of other Sigur Rós videos, including the one to 'Viðrar vel til loftárása', which is probably my favourite song by them).

Enjoy.

paperpete said...

Thanks for the link. Glad you're enjoying the album! :)

fin said...

nothing they do can be predictable....

Anonymous said...

I don't know if you've had a chance to check out anything else by Sigur Rós since you posted this, but in case you haven't, their previous album, ( ), is available for semi-legal download here. Enjoy.

John B. said...

Mr. Syzygy,
Thanks for letting me know. As it happened, the day after I made this post, I went out and bought ( ). So I'm all square with The Man.

Anonymous said...

And what did you think?