I picked up
Von the other day thinking it was a new release. (there's nothing legible printed on it as usual, including a date.) My exact thought on the initial listen was that a band this young and in the pressurized bubble of cult status could exhibit this much freedom gives me hope for the future of music.
The first ten minute track,
Sigur Ros, is somewhere between a soundtrack for a horror film and the sound that just about any group of musicians will make after smoking opium for three days straight in total darkness. I frankly doubt that many of you reading this would care for the work, but I strongly admire this kind of rare organic truth in bands that have "made it"--the overwhelming tendency being rather generally to listen to the suits who are chanting "give us something with a beat and hook, you know, like
Svefn-G-Englar" and most bands it seems are docile enough to follow through, lamely repeating variations on some frozen spark of an idea.
Well, of course now I realize I was wrong.
Von was Sigur's
first release, originally printed in an edition of 500 copies, and eventually selling about 500,000 copies in Iceland, (a goodly number on the island I'd reckon).
Von was released here in the states about 3 months ago and a single copy just made it to my local store. (can you tell I don't spend much time p2ping these days?)
On subsequent listens I began to discern that some of the highly strange production values are in fact probably a result of a low budget. All the more beautiful and rare to my ears.
At any rate, rather than feeling dumb, my original observation was simply compounded: it's almost inconceivable that a band this young can display this much originality--an originality oddly steeped in
tradition, for while it reminds me of absolutely nothing that's gone before it (
other than jamming in total darkness after a three day opium binge that is), one could, if one wished, draw a straight line between early Pink Floyd and Sigur Ros that would traverse more than three almost completely forgotten decades. (Though they look like 14 year olds to your elderly narrator, I assume they are old souls. Come to think of it, Iceland may be transmigrationally reserved for old souls.) And with three albums and a number of EPs under their belt, I'd say if this band realizes their potential for several more decades they will in fact subtly bend the course of music back toward the human every bit as much as the Floyd did. I will await their
Dark Side of the Moon.
Download the whole album and save it for a relaxed, attentive moment when you don't need to have your all your conventional musical buttons jammed down at once for three minutes at a time. Opium optional.
