Sigur Ros

The personal weblog of Daniel Woolstencroft

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By Dan ⋅ November 15, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

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::steve("Steve"):: and I went to see Sigur Ros last night in the shiny, synthetic heart of Birmingham. The evening started well; the support group, Amina, were incredible. Amina are four Icelandic women, each playing various combinations of string instrument, xylophone, hand-bells, and each appearing to be completely interchangeable as to which they play (except for the one that plays the saw, using both bow and drumstick). They combined the traditional instrumentation with a Powerbook, sampling a particular combination of playing, before swapping back to their violins, and using the Powerbook to echo back the instruments they'd been playing a moment before. The whole thing sounded quite beautiful, and would have been made even more magnificent were it not for the constant ramblings of some student whose dissertation had been drenched the night before. Indeed, the whole venue was completely wrong. Carling Academy is far too noisy, smoky, and uncomfortable to appreciate something with subtlety and beauty of Amina. I feared that the Sigur Ros performance would suffer in a similar way. I couldn't have been more wrong. Whilst I think the venue didn't do anything to improve my enjoyment, you can't polish a turd. Sigur Ros themselves played the same tedious dirge for the 90 minutes, performing with undeniable talent but doing nothing particularly exciting. I described them (as we fled pre-encore) as Muse played at the wrong speed. I've not listened to the albums yet (I bought them, but thought I'd wait until post-gig to "enjoy" them) and I wonder if they will sound any better. Somehow, I think not. So, the worst gig I've been to this year, but with one big Amina shaped saving grace.

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