The ethereally-voiced, Tin Tin-haired Jonsi Birgisson arrives in Sydney today after helping close out an unforgettable four days of Splendour in the Grass last night.
For those holding out for his Sydney and Melbourne headline shows, you are in for a hypercolour entrancing cross-artform collaboration with 59 Productions, who have been called “the most exciting purveyors of video for theatre in the world”. They are responsible for projection design for multi-award winning Iraq war drama Black Watch, brand new projections for Les Miserables, as well as countless operas and theatre productions around the world.
The design for the show is partly physical and partly ephemeral, using a combination of set elements, animated projections, light, and shadows – which are synchronised with Jonsi’s euphoric tunes and ecstatic dancing.
The nature-themed projections continually morph… HD thunderstorms rage and flames flicker across a forest stage. Blue lakes pour out from the venue walls. Feathered sketches of wolves hunting deer, hummingbirds, and tumbling flowers float amongst his five piece band.
But truly, words can do this experience no justice. Watch the trailer of Jonsi’s live production (above) and head to jonsi.com for more live photos. While you’re there, download your free copy of Tornado from Jionsi’s debut solo album Go from jonsi.com/tornado.
Sometimes when I like a song soooo much, I have to ration my listening, lest I give myself overkill. Currently somewhere between uncontrollable high rotation and self-imposed limited rations is Jónsi’s newest single Go Do. It’s coming from the Sigur Rós’ lead singer’s upcoming solo album Go. The songs on Go are playful, energetic, dramatic and with the majority of lyrics in English, I can take a break from both my Icelandic and Hopelandic Language 101 studies.
Included on the Go Do EP released today over on iTunes, are album tracks Kolniður and Grow Till Tall. We have them streaming on the soundcloud for you to take a listen in all their glory. Jónsi also kindly shared the track Boy Lillikoi awhile back to introduce his solo work.
So there you go, your Friday listening sorted. Because once you hear Go Do you will likely need to listen again approximately every 15 minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
We have received word and sight of a new project from Jón Þór Birgisson, but the mystery is yet to unravel…
Head over to jonsi.com to preview 5 snippets from tracks (in English no less!) from the upcoming solo release. And if that doesn’t sate your appetite, sign up to his mailing list to receive a free mp3 of Boy Lilikoi.
For those of you unacquainted with the ethereal mews of Jónsi, he is the voice behind Icelandic heart-melters, Sigur Ros and recent side project Jonsi and Alex.
How did it come to this? Ten short years ago I was dancing to TLC’s No Scrubs (judge ye not!) on Manly Beach for the countdown to *gasp* The Millennium.
Suddenly, we’re at the other end of the decade, and we never did work out what to call ‘00-10… “The Noughties” didn’t really cut it. We’d better come up with something quick sticks, because the tunes from the last ten years have been incredible and future generations are going to need to refer to us somehow…
NME’s Top 100 albums of the last decade has some mean contributions, not the least of which is the man of the hour Emperor Luke Steele’s early effort, Lovers from The Sleepy Jackson. The Empire defining epochs, even way back when!
Other EMI faves from the list you can regularly hear blasting around the office are below:
#4 – Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
One very notable absence however… WHERE IS THE DAFT PUNK!?!?
Whilst we greatly respect NME’s all-seeing UK hipster stylings, stay tuned for The In Sound’s very own and very wise Best Of 2009 album list – coming soon to a browser near you!
Never thought we’d be dancing to their stuff on a Saturday night though… But we have learned to never assume. Here’s a remix of the classic Sigur Ros track Hoppipolla by trance royalty Chicane.
Ten years ago, all the Sigur Ros fans in the world were yannow… in Iceland. In fact, they probably all probably crammed inside a single small cold dark room – which incidentally is where they all were on June 10, 1999.
Sigur Ros’ glorious breakthrough album Agaetis Byrjun was launched at the Icelandic Opera House ten years ago this month, and thankfully the band have released exclusive 2 video and audio from that incredible (& no doubt chilly) evening. Tears would have been shed.
Hafssol – download here
A fascinatingly transitional rendition of the seminal Hafssol (later Hafsol), one of the true survivors in the band’s live show, having appeared in almost unrecognisably nebulous form on their debut album Von, and went through endless transmogrification year by year until 2007’s Hvarf/Heim double pack. To this day, Hvarf/Heim is some of my favourite album artwork.
Nyja Lagid
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 album) and disappeared from their set-list shortly after. 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.
Here’s We Are Scientists, the polite comedy duo of indie pop, doing Hoppipolla, the signature tear-jerker for all cinematic moments in life. Keith Murray sings in Icelandic and I wouldn’t have half a clue whether he gets it right, but it sounds pretty good, have to say.
Audio is taken from a live set they did on BBC radio. Visuals are the official Sigur Ros clip.
On theDark Was the Night indie all-star contributor list was the track ‘Happiness’ from Riceboy Sleeps. Who is this little fellow, you ask? Well, it’s Sigur Ros vocalist Jon Thor (Jónsi) Birgisson and his partner Alex Somers. The two have collaborated on visual art under the moniker and now we have an album to go along with it.
What to expect? Magical, ambient, innocent, elegiacal instrumental music.
And straight from the bio:
Played solely on acoustic instruments in Iceland (and featuring long-time string collaborators Amiina, as well as the Kopavogsdaetur 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, uh, organic feel to it.
I do like that ‘organic’ is actually being used literally. Take a listen.
Riceboy Sleeps by Jon Thor (Jónsi) Birgisson & Alex Somers — out 17th July.
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