Wednesday
Jul292009
Amiina + Valgeir + Shlomo
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 6:52AM Here's a short (7min) documentary about Amiina and Valgeir Sigurdsson collaborating with english musician Shlomo. Beautiful music, and very interesting too. And tastefully put together.
Icelandic Music Through Unconventional Means from Gemma Riggs on Vimeo.
Reader Comments (7)
Finally got a chance to see this little clip. It's pretty cool! I'm not sure whether I'd enjoy this music on a typical studio album, but I think I'd love seeing it performed live
Yeah - I know what you mean. Sometimes I do actually enjoy listening to it closely, but most of the time I listen to it while doing something else. It's all about creating mood and atmosphere, but without being insistent - it quite happily does it's thing in the background while you focus on your work. I find it often helps me concentrate.
On the other hand, there's something really mesmerising about seeing it performed live. It's beautiful and interesting - like seeing a beautiful landscape, but the sensory input is sonic rather than visual. Like a landscape, a soundscape is all about the sweeping vista rather than being about the specific details. While there might be an interesting tree in the landscape, the painter is more interested in showing it's relationship to the rest of the scene, rather than focussing in on the details of it's leaves and bark.
Yes - a recording is like having a painting on the wall - ever present but not attention grabbing - while a live performance is like standing on the edge of a cliff and taking in the landscape with your own eyes...
do you mean Valgeir Sigurðsson - the ð being more of an 'o" than a 'd" - hence Sigur Ros (derived from his name....) which just occurred to me when watching this........amazingly creative bunch...
PS doncha love the quality of Vimeo? youtube has a long way to go when you compare it to this..
Hi Geoff - yes that's the guy. I didn't know how to make the correct letter so I went for whatever looked closest. :-) I didn't know that Sigur Ros got their name from his though... I thought they were named after the singer's sister...? Maybe it's a common name?
You are absolutely right about vimeo. Much better than YouTube.
Actually - you're right. My full-of-shit speculation trick (deriving the band name 'Sigur Ros" from "Sigurossen" with a fancy "o" (ð) was simply a coincidence. From the fount of all knoweldge (WIkipedia)
"Their name is Icelandic wordplay: While the individual words Sigur and Rós mean, respectively, Victory and Rose, "Victory Rose" wouldn't be grammatically correct.[citation needed] The name is thus taken from Jónsi's younger sister Sigurrós, who was born the same day as the band was formed, and then split into two words."
I thought Valgier Sigurrðsen was IN the band. Clearly not.
As you were.
Hey dude! Thanks for the clarification. :-)