19 August 2010

Jónsi & Alex - riceboy sleeps (2009, EMI)

The musical result of five years of intimate artistic collaboration between Jónsi (Jon Thor Birgisson – Sigur Ros) and Alex (Alex Somers – Parachutes and behind most of the artwork of Sigur Ros) is a long instrumental album with the episodic interventions of the members or Amiina and a children's choir.

The results are softer, warmer and more intimate than Sigur Ros works, we are inside a comfortable house lost in the middle of a vast icy winter landscape and below a magnificent open sky. It's harmless, if floats between new age, ambient and post-rock, extremely gentle, smooth and easy but once that said, not so easy to dismiss as useless. Of course this is the kind of record you'll probably enjoy but easily forget but also a sure value to play in the background like certain records by Hammock, Album Leaf or even the Cocteau Twins on their ambient explorations can be. 

Somewhat it is a succedaneum, an ethereal derivate, a new form of Sigur Ros (SR vs. RS), and it cannot be considered as a total independent expression. All this is perplexing so for enjoying this record I think I keep my mind disconnected and just let these emotions carry me away in their stream of consciousness.



http://jonsiandalex.com/

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