930 Forums
=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: root on September 12, 2005, 11:38:00 am
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Fuckin' Brilliant!
for those that missed and have interest or those that wish to re-live, check:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4834623 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4834623)
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yeah absolutely amazing. i was 4th row center and it was fucking breathtaking
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unbelievable. it was like seeing a symphony.
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Wow, how rock and roll is that?
Originally posted by callat703:
unbelievable. it was like seeing a symphony.
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I agree...it was fantastic. I thought it was better than the 930 show a few years back (the night the war in Iraq started).
I was sitting in the 4th row, behind this girl who would not stop taking pics with her razor phone. (She did stop when I politely asked her to though, so that was nice).
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I don't know that Sigur Ros ever claimed to be rock and roll. Hence playing the Strathmore and having a string quartet open up for them. I think they aim to be a modern incarnation of classical music in some regards, though I don't know that they'd ever admit to that.
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Originally posted by callat703:
I don't know that Sigur Ros ever claimed to be rock and roll. Hence playing the Strathmore and having a string quartet open up for them. I think they aim to be a modern incarnation of classical music in some regards, though I don't know that they'd ever admit to that.
I saw Drums, Bass, Guitar and Keyboards on stage. Yes, they had violinists, but so does the Dave Matthews Band and others. So are they rock or not?
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Originally posted by Glass Arm Shattering:
So are they rock or not?
rock or not, they are boring.
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Originally posted by distance:
Originally posted by Glass Arm Shattering:
So are they rock or not?
rock or not, they are boring. [/b]
They are "röçk"
The consonants are silent.
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From what I've heard of them, sounds like good music to clean the house or read the paper to. Not sure what the live show might add to the whole experience...?
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Originally posted by Xavier Bush, Power Forward:
From what I've heard of them, sounds like good music to clean the house or read the paper to. Not sure what the live show might add to the whole experience...?
i kept hearing that the shows were amazing and were life-changing experiences practically.
these people were obviously on crack. sigur ros was by far one of the most boring concert experiences i've ever had in my entire life.
it's hard to justify walking out of a show when you've paid for two tickets and drove 2 hours to go to it. if it had been local, i would have left.
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i haven't seen them but i dont imagine it being too much of a departure from the recordings themselves. distance, were you into the music beforehand or just checking it out based on word of mouth? i'm not exactly sure what you expected. i like a lot of music that travels at a snail's pace mainly because im a pothead (can i say that on this board?) but when i see that type of music live i try not to be too conscious of time passing otherwise i'll get all antsy. closing your eyes helps as well as just sitting down, but i guess you cant really do that at 9:30. going to see sigur ros and calling it boring seems to me like going to see the harlem globetrotters and calling em phonies. sigur ros don't exactly make heart-pumping music. it's maudlin post-new age dreampop or something. you should have known better!
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yeah, like anything that branches out on an extreme tip. folks either love it or hate it, but from the crowed reaction last night, i would venture to say there was much LOVE! :)
now back to Good Charlotte!
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i'd say that the benefit of the live show is to see it performed. the band has such a unique sound, and is based on dynamics that the benefit of the live set is to be a direct part of that movement. like i said, it reminded me of seeing a symphony or a classical performance. yes, it echoed the record, but the benefit is in the extra dynamic added in the live setting.
sorry that you had a poor experience though; i think people might have led you astray in their descriptions. I'd certainly say that it was a great show, but definitely not a rock concert.
And why does having guitars, bass, and drums equal rock music? Can't you perform something in a classical vein with those instruments?
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Originally posted by shoot ur shot:
i haven't seen them but i dont imagine it being too much of a departure from the recordings themselves. distance, were you into the music beforehand or just checking it out based on word of mouth? i'm not exactly sure what you expected. i like a lot of music that travels at a snail's pace mainly because im a pothead (can i say that on this board?) but when i see that type of music live i try not to be too conscious of time passing otherwise i'll get all antsy. closing your eyes helps as well as just sitting down, but i guess you cant really do that at 9:30. going to see sigur ros and calling it boring seems to me like going to see the harlem globetrotters and calling em phonies. sigur ros don't exactly make heart-pumping music. it's maudlin post-new age dreampop or something. you should have known better!
well i'd heard them and i found them a bit boring. i've seen quite a few bands that are pretty different/better live than on album and with the descriptions i was getting (some from people i thought to be realiable in their opinions), i checked it out.
as far as the pace, it wasn't an issue of the pace. i saw 7 GYBE shows the same month that i saw the sigur ros shows. i wouldn't have loathed the sigur ros show as much if it had been a seated show, i don't think. but i didn't care about standing for ~3hrs for gybe (multiple times)
i didn't go expecting heart-pumping music. i expected more of an interesting show. i expected more than just a guy spewing forth jibberish for 1.5-2 hours or whatever with songs that droned on and on and never went anywhere -- where all the songs basically blurred together into one tedious, whiny grind of noise.
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Sigur Ros
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Who better to perform the first-ever full-blown rock concert at Strathmore Hall than Icelandic art rock troupe Sigur Ros? The band's otherworldly orchestrations were a perfect match for the colossal concert hall's sleek, modern design (like something out of "Star Wars," only with acoustic-friendly wood paneling). Even the folks controlling the thermostat contributed to the ambiance by re-creating Iceland's frosty temperatures.
Despite the chill, a seated audience of 1,900 still managed to keep mum and mind their manners. Pity the poor souls who set off false alarms of applause during a silent passage in the middle of the 90-minute-plus performance. (Grouchy fans-in-the-know swiftly shushed them.)
So while nobody yelled "Free Bird," nobody yelled for "Svefn-G-Englar," either. But the respectful silence didn't discourage Sigur Ros from surging through said tune from the breakthrough 1999 album "Agaetis Byrjun." This number and others from 2002's curiously titled "( )" sounded exquisite thanks to the hall's superior acoustics.
Test-driving selections from its new album, "Takk" (which arrives in stores today), Sigur Ros sounded more like a rock band than some alien orchestra from Planet Reykjavik. And while Jon Thor Birgisson's elfin vocalizations may have enchanted back in '99, the intrigue of his cuckoo-cooing has worn off over the course of six years, often exposing an indulgent sentimentality.
Fellow Icelandic quartet Anima provided string backup, in addition to its own opening set. The quartet's music twinkled like a New Age music box, unfolding at the pace of Ravel's "Bolero" -- sounds that would fit nicely on those relaxation CDs next to the organic lip balms at Whole Foods.
-- Chris Richards
The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091201662.html)
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The National Review call Sigur Ros "the coolest rock band in the world." Is there any bigger endorsement?
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September 13, 2005, 8:15 a.m.
Worldâ??s Coolest Band
Theyâ??re from Iceland!
It's tempting to proclaim Sigur Ros the coolest rock band in the world, because they're from Iceland and it's pretty cool there. But calling Sigur Ros a rock band is like calling the Rolling Stones a blues band â?? not a ridiculously obtuse description, but still in basic need of a ticket to the clue bus.
When the four guys who make up Sigur Ros walked on stage at the Strathmore, in Bethesda, Md., on Sunday night, they certainly looked like a rock band â?? there's a singer/guitarist, a bass player, a keyboard guy, and a drummer. But rock bands don't usually play at the Strathmore. This is the venue that the National Philharmonic calls home, for crying out loud. Old people listen to music here!
But the Strathmore was perfect for Sigur Ros and their set list, which included none of the three-and-a-half-minute, verse-chorus-verse numbers that fill up most rock shows. That's because Sigur Ros (which translates from Icelandic as "victory rose") plays something else entirely â?? songs that begin with a soft whisper of noise and build into shimmering crescendos of sound, rarely less than six or seven minutes long and often more than ten. They've been compared to Pink Floyd and labeled the vanguard of a new progressive rock movement. I've seen them called "post-rock."
Whatever Sigur Ros is, the music is totally different from what's played on radio stations that still insist on labeling themselves "alternative." This band is the alternative to alternative. If I were Peter Jackson, I would have asked Sigur Ros to perform on one of the Lord of the Rings soundtracks â?? both because it would have been a fitting tip of the hat to J.R.R. Tolkien's fondness for the sagas and language of Iceland, but also because I don't know another group of contemporary musicians whose playing sounds so epic.
The band's new album Takk ("thanks" in Icelandic) came out this week, and the early critics are praising it as the band's most accessible work to date.
Accessible or not, something about Sigur Ros is defiantly uncommercial. They sing songs without names in a language nobody can understand. And I'm not talking about Icelandic, which is a language that the 300,000 inhabitants of Iceland presumably know well. Instead, singer Jónsi Birgisson's falsetto voice warbles in a language of his own invention, "Hopelandic." It is apparently a combination of Icelandic and nonsense words (not that I can tell the difference). To complicate matters, the previous Sigur Ros album was called () â?? yes, that's an empty pair of parentheses â?? and none of its eight songs was given a title. My iPod loaded them as "Untitled 1," "Untitled 2," and so on. (Die-hard fans do have names for them: "Vaka" and "Fyrsta," for example.)
Who was the marketing genius behind that idea? Whoever he is, maybe he should get a few more kronas (that's Icelandic money), because Sigur Ros somehow has found a niche â?? the show at the Strathmore was sold out (nearly 1900 seats), and the fans were obviously devoted. In the hallway afterward, I heard people saying things such as: "I liked how they played 'Svefn-g-englar.'" That's another song title.
Jónsi and his pals don't exactly burst with personality. From stage, they said virtually nothing to the audience â?? they let the music do the talking. They were helped immeasurably by a string quartet of women who go by the name Amina â?? a group that has collaborated with Sigur Ros in the studio and whose strings add lushness to the music. My favorite Sigur Rose song is "Untitled 8" from () â?? known to us Sigurheads, affectionately, as "Popp" â?? and it never sounded better to my ears than it did Sunday night, with the ladies of Amina playing alongside the guys.
If you've gotten this far, then you need to stop reading and start listening. A lot of the best Sigur Ros material happens to be available free on the web.
You can even listen to the show I saw, which was broadcast live on NPR and is available here (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4834623). For a quicker fix, check out the mp3 recordings (http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/media/index.html) on the Sigur Ros webpage. My advice is to download "Untitled #8," a.k.a. "Popp." If you think it's got a good beat and it's easy to dance to, then you obviously need more help than I can provide. But if you're entranced by its sweeping range and spacey sounds, then try some of the others. A week from now, you may just find yourself humming in Hopelandic.
â?? John J. Miller is national political reporter for National Review and the co-author, most recently, of Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France.
http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200509130815.asp (http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200509130815.asp)
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Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
I've seen them called "post-rock."
no way, John J. Miller! "post-rock"?!? what a crazy term!! must be some kind of cutting edge slang that kids are using these days!
what was that?
tortoise? ten years ago?
no, i've never heard of them, sorry.
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Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
because I don't know another group of contemporary musicians whose playing sounds so epic.
god this article is so stupid ... it sounds like the guy doesn't have a clue about pop music, but somehow stumbled across sigur ros and feels compelled to write about it and sound like he knows what he's talking about
for an "epic" sound, i'd take Explosions in the Sky or a handful of other post-rock groups any day over Sigur Ros, which is certainly pleasant, but hardly as "epic" as others
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gybe 7 times in a month?! let me guess, they're your favorite band?
Originally posted by distance:
as far as the pace, it wasn't an issue of the pace. i saw 7 GYBE shows the same month that i saw the sigur ros shows.
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Originally posted by shoot ur shot:
[QB] gybe 7 times in a month?! let me guess, they're your favorite band?
Now I saw them once (and granted I do like them), but I did fall asleep for a few min. during that one! and i saw a few others with open mouths and closed eyes!
:o
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Originally posted by shoot ur shot:
gybe 7 times in a month?! let me guess, they're your favorite band?
no.
i had the ability and the opportunity to do so, and i did.