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RICEBOY SLEEPS - PARLOPHONE 2009 PRESS
RELEASE
Known primarily for his haunting falsetto and other-worldly presence as
the singer in sigur ros, jon thor (jonsi) birgisson has - together with
his partner alex somers - been exhibiting artwork and staging
exhibitions under the name riceboy sleeps for two or three years now. a
couple of months back the early fruits of the musical side of this
collaboration surfaced in physical form for the first time, with the
track ‘happiness’, on the exemplary ‘dark was the night’ red hot
compilation.
Among such company as antony hegarty,
arcade fire, sufjan stevens and
many more high and mighty names besides, it says something that jonsi &
alex’s sparse and haunting instrumental contribution was picked out by
many people who-ought-to-know as the apex of the record - especially
given that the track was neither finished nor mastered when the
deadline came around.
Now, however, the full-length riceboy
sleeps’ album (the name having
migrated from artist moniker to album title) is finished and ready for
release. and, as with ‘happiness’, it is set to subtly redefine
expectations of slow and elegiac instrumental music in 2009.
‘Riceboy sleeps’ is human in a profound
and verging-on spiritual way
it says nothing, literally, and yet living through its 68-minutes you
emerge feeling much has been revealed. its slowly evolving abstract
landscapes are both edifying and life-affirming. the record works as a
whole, and exists in a contemplative dream-state, unconstrained and
mesmeric, seemingly outside time.
The record, however, is more active than
its apparent antecedents in
the ambient output of brian eno, and other deliberately low-impact
works. ‘riceboy sleeps’ is awash with both tension and stimuli, as well
as being frequently, and stunningly, beautiful. a piece like ‘daniell
in the sea’ feels as natural as breathing, or more precisely like being
able to breath fresh air after a long period spent in stagnant
confinement. in fact both ‘daniell…’ and ’sleeping giant’ appear
to
feature actual breathing, albeit through some kind of underwater
respirator.
This filtering function of making the world
seem at once alien and
as-new, is perhaps the strongest sensations to be derived from
listening to ‘riceboy sleeps’. jonsi & alex’s artwork has always
been
intoxicated with the notion of innocence (as in many ways is his work
in sigur ros, although the only musical comparisons here would be with
the band’s most blissed-out atmospheric songs), so it is perhaps not
surprising that this washed-clean sensation should ring clear from this
startling record.
Played solely on acoustic instruments in
iceland (and featuring
long-time string collaborators amiina, as well as the kopavogsdaetur
choir) and then endlessly toyed with on solar-powered laptops in a raw
food commune in some far corner of hawaii, ‘riceboy sleeps’ has a
suitably, uh, ‘organic feel’ to it; the wave-like lapping of its tidal
flow buried beneath analogue hiss, crackle, pulse and distortion; the
creaking of rigging and sometime indeterminate falling delicately over;
and, on ‘howl’, ruminative animal chirrups, grunts, snorts and purrs.
Sometimes it feels like a record coming
back at you across the seas of
time, with ancient washington phillips-style tumbling musical figures
and stumbling crescendos as slow as a sunrise, or a weightless
mantra-like choir singing from somewhere in the middle ages down the
centuries.
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