Scattered Ashes

Sigur Rós, one of my favorite bands, has a new album comming out on September 16 called "Takk", which means "thanks" in Icelandic. Sigur Rós is part of the so-called "post-rock" scene, which consists of bands such as Múm, TV on the Radio, Godspeed you! Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky amongst others. Personally, I consider their untitled album, also known as ( ), to be one of the greatest musical masterpieces written in the past few years. Here's a short review that I wrote on that album some years ago:

"The title of Sigur Rós’ new album could not be more adequate: a simple set of parentheses, a symbol, as though its contents were something that is only implicit, something that can only be hinted at; indeed, as though language could not capture its essence. Perhaps this is the reason why the songs are unnamed, and the vocals are sung in an imaginary language. Yet, the symbol in the album’s cover could also be a mirrored image of a circle, a half circle made whole by its own reflection. If so, one might assume that the album’s contents are meant to cast back images, feelings, essences, memories, all forgotten fragments of the listener’s reflection. Consequently, ( ) would be more properly described as an introspective experience that leads to self-shaping (askesis) by means of personal revelation (theoria).

As the listener plunges into the music, he finds himself suspended in the metaxy, the in-between; that place where one is reminded that man is in this world, yet not of this world. In this manner begins a two-part meditation of 71:51 minutes, a pilgrimage that takes the listener through the delicate textures that Sigur Rós builds by relying on murmurs, on the sweet and melancholic notes of the falsetto, and the incantations that Jonsi, Sigur Rós’ singer, intones from that trance-like state where everything seems to levitate. And then there are the bowed guitars, the exquisite piano lines, the slow percussion, and the string arrangements, which taken together, weave sublime landscapes for the mind. As the music fades, it becomes clear that the pilgrimage itself is a journey to the start: like a sleepwalker that awakes startled to find himself in a strange place, one rouses in the other side of the mirror to recognize one’s unadulterated reflection; then, in a state of complete solitude, reflection and self become congruent again using no other guide but these sounds.

These are the sounds of birth and death, the balance of yin and yang, the light and darkness of the Manichean world-view; it is Dante’s Divine Comedy: Paradise with its beautiful angelic melodies, the silence of Purgatory, and the somber tones of Inferno. These are the echoes of Mozart’s piano, the unheard laments of Gorecki’s third. Indeed, this album can be whatever one wants it to be: it is a tabula rasa, a blank slate. It is an empty booklet awaiting to be written."