|
A Very
Sigur Ros Adventure
Aline Lemos travels north of the border, and then back again, in hot
pursuit of her heroes...
After almost a month trying to interview a band member from Sigur Ros,
missing having a face to face interview with them in Glasgow, the interview
finally happened on Feb. 24th. It was all well worth it, though…
The “wee” adventure to Glasgow (what a great place!) was fantastic, and the
gig at the Glasgow Barrowlands was so great that it made me persevere
afterwards to try and talk to them.
We arrived there at 7
15 PM, and found a silent but anxious crowd. After a while, lights were
turned off and they showed two videos from the Agaetis Byrjun album (‘Svefn-g-englar’
and ‘Viarar vel til loftarasa’) and also a video from the first song of the
latest album. It was hard not to be taken by the sensitivity and beauty from
those images and sound… take a deep breath…
Hence came the Sigur
Ros boys… and girls, since the violin players from the Amina group are all
women. They started the set with the first song from the latest album, which
was followed by ‘Staralful’, and ‘Ny Batteri. Jonsi, the singer, announced
that they were playing some songs for the first time…and it seemed that he
had such a relaxed, ‘boy-like’ posture that mid way through ‘Staralful’ he
started laughing.
The band performed some
new songs, which will feature in the upcoming album, to be released in
August. Generally speaking, it was an excellent gig; you had all that you’d
expect to see in a Sigur Ros gig: few people fainting, Jonsi playing the
guitar with the ebo – not to mention his magnificent vocals – and the
dream-like atmosphere you were caught upon throughout the set… It was a
privilege being in their first gig of this year’s tour.
I was even more
privileged (and happy) when I spoke to Orri Pall, Sigur Ros’ drummer, over
the phone. They had been to Sweden, Denmark, Germany and I’d spoken to their
tour manager several times before finally arranging some time to talk to
him. Here are some questions that he answered, through a noisy, echoing
phone line from Lyon, France:
Tasty Zine-How important is playing live to you?
Orri- Really important. We really like it and it’s been good to play live on
this tour.
T - How have Sigur Ros changed since the tour of Agaetis
Byrjun?
O - Our lives have changed a lot; we were definitely not as we were some
years ago. But it’s been good, we’re working on the studio and we all have a
better life now.
T- So it’s life on tour ok?
O- Yeah, it’s alright.
T- Have you written much new material since the release of
the latest album? After seeing you live in Glasgow I could tell you played a
few unreleased songs…
O – Yeah, those songs will be on the new album, we’re working on them at the
moment on studio. And we played them cause if we were in the crowd we’d like
to listen to new songs…
T- Right… and will you have the Amina players with you for
the new album as well or will it be more like ‘ Von’ ?
O- Yeah I think they’ll be playing in it as well.
T- I know you probably heard this a hundred times, but I’ll
ask anyway…
O- Ok …(laughs)
T- In your latest work the songs and the album are untitled…
we know that the fans are supposed to come up with them and all. But could
it be that it was also something you did against the music industry?
O- No, not really, we weren’t really thinking about it, it was more like we
want people to be creative and to come up with titles for the songs.
T-
Awesome. One last question: how much creative input does the band have in
making the videos?
O- Well, for the first video we did it ourselves; the second one there were
two guys directing it for us, but it was our own idea and for the third one
as well, we had the same guys directing and we discussed our idea with
theirs.
Strong accents and awful phone line apart, Orri was very
friendly and answered
promptly the humble questions Selene and I came up with. I’d like to thank
her for helping me out, as well as Sam, for making this possible!!! Until
the next one, cheers!!!  |
