Electricity wires are down
Rainbow colours fading to brown
Adventurous smile shifting to frown
Courageous boy, now you're a clown
Your Antarctic hair, off with the crown
Your spirited friends, now a ghost town
You run
Some concerts you go to listen to the music, some you go to see the sights and some you go to experience. Sigur Rós’s show at the Beacon Theatre on Wednesday night, a performance backed by the Wordless Music Orchestra, was an experience. When the massive ensemble took an intermission break after an hour of dense orchestral performance, the man sitting next to me simply said, “Speechless.” Others probably felt the opposite, racing to dictionaries and thesauruses to find the right adjectives — majestic, transcendent, otherworldly, sublime — to properly capture the music.
The large ensemble, dozens of string players and more joining the Icelandic trio, moved slowly, painting the venue’s sonic canvas with broad brushstrokes of sound. The show was a study in contrasts, big and loud, yet feeling small and quiet on pieces like “Starálfur,” off their 1999 album, Ágætis byrjun. Instead of swallowing and overwhelming the core band, the addition of an orchestra served to highlight. Jónsi’s voice sailed like a boat across a current of violins and cellos. The warm lighting bathed the stage in golden yellows and soft blues, beautifully silhouetting the musicians.
The Wordless Music Orchestra did the same thing for Sigur Rós, musical silhouettes of repeated piano lines on “Dauðalogn” and “Untitled #1 (Vaka)” bathed in the warm sonic strings that filled the stage. The audience was mostly edge-of-the-seat rapt, stirred only by excitement for favorites, like “Hoppípolla,” providing pure melodic joy late in the second set, huge swells of sound rendering them speechless or with too much to say, an experience through and through. —A. Stein | @Neddyo
(Sigur Rós play Kings Theatre on Friday.)
(Sigur Rós play Boch Center in Boston on Saturday.)
Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @Silvia_Saponaro
freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) opens today 09.23.22. It is an immersive installation curated by Carl Michael von Hausswolff, which transforms the interior of the Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatories with a visual and sound installation.
Participating artists for freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) include:
15–30 Hz Greg Anderson (USA)
31–65 Hz Jana Winderen (NO)
66–90 Hz Minoru Sato (JP)
91–140 Hz Jimena Sarno (AR/USA)
141–180 Hz Bethan Kellough (UK/USA)
181–250 Hz Tom Recchion (USA)
251–350 Hz JG Thirlwell (AUS/USA)
351–500 Hz Alba Triana (CO/USA)
501–1000 Hz Jónsi (IS/USA)
1001–2000 Hz Lawrence English (AUS)
2001–5000 Hz Yan Jun (CN)
5001–12000 Hz Richard Chartier (USA)
freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) runs from 09.23-25.22 11am-5pm. Ticketed performances at Mt Wilson tonight 09.23.22 by Lawrence English and Minoru Sato. More info at https://fulcrumfestival.org/
You'll know when's time to go on
You'll really want to grow, and grow till tall
They all, in the end, will fall
They, in the end, will turn and fall
You'll know, you'll go
You'll know
You'll know
if you could replace Jonsi for the HTTYD movies, who would you pick?*
Maybe it’s a bit on the nose but AURORA because she gives major Viking fairy vibes or something but her music is very ethereal and she even has a similar voice to Jonsi. Plus I love her songs and I think they already fit with the franchise. (and she’s also Scandinavian :))