Reviews March 3, 2008

 OK the time has come, it has to be done.

Takk by Sigur Ros (yes I’m having a slightly romanticised month with sigur ros) is quite possibly the best chill out -find your inner self and also laid back and getting stoned to kinda -without actually getting stoned -type of easy listening music album that is out there today. And they are lovely down to earth Icelandic beautiful ordinary people in an extraordinary circumstance in that they are truly gifted musicians.

My favourite track is track 3 Hoppipolla, its one of the most sublime audio experiances you will have.

Huge and intimate, orchestral and gossamer-light, rich layered and essentially simple, ‘takk…’ is a work of a band operating at the very top of their game. it accomplishes what maybe they haven’t done since they first appeared, which is to make high-flown ideas appear to be straight ahead pop music, or, perhaps more accurately, invest pop music with a sense of magic long since lost in the mists of time and imagination (not that they sound anything like any music made back in any mythical musical heyday).

‘takk…’ seems to operate so far outside the confines of what else is going on as to make comparison redundant. that the band were not going to be held by any narrow categorisation was apparent from the off. that they might be capable of creativity at this level of freedom and imagination was more than any of us might ever have hoped for. ‘takk…’ is an instant classic, and might well turn out to be sigur rós’s masterpiece.

“there is nothing clever about sigur rós and how we write songs, it’s just mucking about really. it’s all very spontant (sic),” says the band’s kjartan sveinsson, although most musicians could muck about for millennia and never come up with anything approaching ‘takk…’.

flowing through 65 minutes of 11 linked pieces, ‘takk…’ came together relatively quickly (in sigur rós terms), with recording starting in earnest last december and mixing finishing this june. the running order more or less wrote itself by the spring, with several additional songs naturally falling by the wayside as the record took shape.

the band deliberately put a halt to live performances two years ago, to ensure anything they wrote towards the album would remain fresh in their minds. as a result only two of the songs on ‘takk…’ have ever been heard at shows (prior to the band’s current european jaunt), with the remaining nine taking off in a multitude of new directions, only hinted at by the band’s previous work. ideas burst free in every direction, where before the band might have worked through a concept to its utter conclusion (playing and developing a song as slowly as possible – the origin of a thousand ‘glacial’ metaphors), they now burn through ideas with scant regard. songs begin in one time signature and end in another, having morphed beyond recognition on their passage through. a beautiful piano motif will be bombed into submission by power chords, which in turn will succumb to a heavenly string-led calm after the storm.

Its amazing, I realy felt that I should inform you.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hand built by robots- Newton Faulkner

Well since I am attending his gig next week I thought who better to start with than the maestro himself. How many of you have heard of the guy? I briefly heard him being mentioned about 3 years ago via a friend of mine who was living in the Uk and then all of a sudden “there’s a place I go when I’m alone, do anything I want be anyone I wana be….” is running around solemnly on my head, on repeat. I don’t know whether it was the case that he reminded me of a good friend of mine Robin’sguitar playing, and so I likened to the guy instantly or whether it was simply the fact hat he was better than the rest of the shite out there trying to sound like everyone else. Thing is if your going to try and attempt to play a guitar with alotta style and fingertip precision playing, you had want to be damn bloody good. Newton Faulkner is that good.Hand built by Robots, is a declaration of love and appreciation of the guitar and musician adjoining themselves in one. to create this amazing sound. And hey, I respect the guy for achieving this at such a young age. 22, jesus, fair play. And for you man lovers out there, he is also very hot indeed. One would almost mistake him for Irish with is red hair and dark set eyes. Not to mention his Musical ability of course.

This colourful acoustic based album is a stroke of acoustical bliss and enlightenment, a meaningful approach to music writing and elusive sounds, and superb musicianship. to say it was an exquisite and highly inspirational debut album would be an understatement. It is a monumental debut packed to the to the brim with surprise and anticipation and a celebration of finely rounded acoustic based music. An album drenched in thought, reflection and new ideas. I don’t need to go any further get up and listen to it, favourite tracks would be:

Dream catch me and comfortably slow. but every tune on this is as delightful as the next or last.