Sigur Rós: men with curiouser and curiouser imagination

Icelandic sense of humour or a message to the major label they’ve signed with [EMI] but Sigur Rós’ debut release is… well, esoteric. It could also be a typical Icelandic, or rather - the band’s way because the ‘Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do’ EP is 20-minutes of instrumental music.

Official word [PR quotations]: “Written for octogenarian US choreographer Merce Cunningham Dance Company's 50th gala performance, music-box piano lines, percussive sounds derived from ballet shoes and the fractured syllables and tap dancing feet of Merce Cunningham himself.

First performed alongside Radiohead's similarly commissioned piece at Brooklyn Academy of Music last October, 'Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do' forms part of the Cunningham Dance Company's Split Sides programme, wherein the elements of choreography, music, set design, costume and lighting are chosen randomly on the night by the throw of the dice. In this way the collision of dance and music are entirely open to chance as part of a 32-way probability factor, and any synchronisation is - theoretically at least - entirely coincidental.

In practise, the members of Sigur Rós stand in the orchestra pit watching the dancers like hawks and adjusting their playing rhythm and style according to activity on stage - often to exhilarating effect. The music on this EP is a performance of 'Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do' recorded at the band's Icelandic studio in late Nov 2003, after the initial run of BAM performances of Split Sides and in light of the experience derived therefore.”

These three tracks, respectively 'Ba Ba', 'Ti Ki' and, indeed, 'Di Do' correspond to the spirit of the commission inasmuch these were initially written to be played in any order, but, having lived with them, the band like it best in the presented sequence. The opening one offers the nearest to a conventional song structure in the vein of Tangerine Dream-cum-Brian Eno-cum-[dare we say it?]-Mike Oldfield.

The truth is that it, ‘Ti Ki’ is even more ambient, sound on the whole like music for a ‘clockwork-android’ in ‘Blade Runner’ without any ‘Orange’ in sight. Playful, contemplative, minimal for sure, Sigur Rós Ros offer music for thinkers, dreamers and futurists… Until ‘Di Do’ turns on menace, ups the claustrophobic quotient [wouldn’t try it in the dark on the headphones] without losing on warped funkiness. Man, high on imagination!

More official words: “Founded on field recordings of the dancers feet recorded at their rehearsal space in Manhattan, the live elements are played on two sheet-fed music boxes (£25 each from a nice little place in Bristol), a glockenspiel bowed with a cello bow and a homemade percussive doo-dah called a ‘bommsett’, which comprises eight ballet shoes on a rack which are poked, prodded and struck to extract various noises.

The artwork incorporates elements of Robert Heishman's set design for Split Sides, as well as Merce's stick-figure notations for choreography. It comes as a special digipack CD and one-sided 12-inch which also features an etching from Merce Cunningham on the flip. It is said to be a thing of beauty.”

Split Sides has subsequently been performed at Merce Cunningham runs in both Paris and Seoul, Korea, and is expected to form part of the company's programme for their shows at London's Barbican later in the year. Sigur Rós also performed 'Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do' as part of the Cunningham Dance Company programme in Bergen, Norway on 21 May. The band is now back in their studio, working on the fourth album - see yesterday’s News for additional info.

8/10