From the "Sigur Rós - Heima" website:
Last year, in the endless magic hour of the Icelandic summer, Sigur Rós played a series of concerts around their homeland. Combining both the biggest and smallest shows of their career, the entire tour was filmed, and now provides a unique insight into one of the world’s shyest and least understood bands captured live in their natural habitat.
The culmination of more than a year spent promoting their hugely successful ‘Takk…’ album around the world, the Icelandic tour was free to all-comers and went largely unannounced. Playing in deserted fish factories, outsider art follies, far-flung community halls, sylvan fields, darkened caves and the hoofprint of Odin’s horse, Sleipnir*, the band reached an entirely new spectrum of the Icelandic population; young and old, ardent and merely quizzical, entirely by word-of-mouth.
The question of the way Sigur Rós’s music relates to, and is influenced by, their environment has been reduced to a journalistic cliché about glacial majesty and fire and ice, but there is no doubt that the band are inextricably linked to the land in which they were forged. And the decision to film this first-ever Sigur Rós film in Iceland was, in the end, ineluctable.
Shot using a largely Icelandic crew (to minimise Eurovision-style scenic-wonder overload), ‘Heima’ - which means both “at home” and “homeland” - is an attempt to make a film every bit as big, beautiful and unfettered as a Sigur Rós album. As such it was always going to be something of a grand folie, but one, which taking in no fewer than 15 locations around Iceland (including the country’s largest ever concert at the band’s Reykjavik homecoming), is never less than epic in its ambition.
Material from all four of the band’s albums is featured, including many rare and notable moments. Among these are a heart-stopping rendition of the previously unreleased ‘Gitardjamm’, filmed inside a derelict herring oil tank in the far West Fjords; a windblown, one-mic recording of ‘Vaka’, shot at a dam protest camp subsequently drowned by rising water; and first time acoustic versions of such rare live beauties as ‘Staralfur’, ‘Agaetis Byrjun’ and ‘Von’.
9 Comments
calvadosSigur Ros? Instavote!
neteansays...Sigur Ros are one of those rare bands that come along every few years - genuinely differnt, genuinely brilliant.
It never ceases to amaze me how the English speaking world generally ignores music that isn't in English, yet somehow bands from Iceland (rightly) get through the shield.
Considering also that pretty much every Icelander speaks perfect English (as all Scandies do!) they choose to sing in Icelandic and are the better for it (IMO)
superb band. I like them a lot!
bamdrewI bought this dvd for my parents last year. They liked it.
paul4dirtgreat sift! i love em. check out olafur arnalds too, he toured on the 2008 european tour supporting sigur ros and his album 'eulogy for evolution' is pretty amazing too.
http://www.videosift.com/video/lafur-Arnalds-Fok-live-on-Kastljs-RV-TV-Iceland
(ill sift more of him later, if you guys wont do it (if you do, let me know for a guaranteed upvote))
(btw, dunno if it available as a vid but 3055 is a great song by him)
11714awsome awsome awsome! i've always wanted to know more about sigur ros... Never really knew much to begin with, just loved the hell out of them. Their music is transcendental, brilliant, beautiful, and powerful. Now if only I had a clue on how to pronounce any of my favorite songs of theirs :-S
*promote
dead_tofu>> ^netean:
Sigur Ros are one of those rare bands that come along every few years - genuinely differnt, genuinely brilliant.
It never ceases to amaze me how the English speaking world generally ignores music that isn't in English, yet somehow bands from Iceland (rightly) get through the shield.
Considering also that pretty much every Icelander speaks perfect English (as all Scandies do!) they choose to sing in Icelandic and are the better for it (IMO)
superb band. I like them a lot!
i hate to bring it to you, but i interviewed them the first time they played outside iceland and found out that only the bass player spoke english. the other 3 didnt speak a word of english. being icelandic myself, i was a little shocked. i couldnt think of a cave that was so isolated from society back home, but they must have found it, and stayed there for awhile. not many people are aware of that, but their 'hopelandic' is brilliant, just a little more forced than orginal, as most people think.
11807says...Instant upvote for opening with "Glosoli" =D
It amazes me how since I first discovered Sigur Ros, they seem to be everywhere now--kind of like getting a green car and suddenly everyone seems to have a green car.
They've managed to have a measurable influence in media and yet stay relatively anonymous. So often I hear their music in a video and people will ask,"I love that music, who are they???"
So far I've heard "Saeglopur" in both a PSA for anorexia and the new Prince of Persia trailer.
"Hoppipolla" in the Penelope trailer
"Von" and another song in CSI.
And an unkown song in the Dead Space trailer.
Oh, and lets not forget “Staralfur” in The life aquatic.
Looking them up in Wikipedia, it looks like their music has been used dozens more times in movies, commercials, etc. And most people still don't know who they are. Kinda funny.
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