Viva La Vinyl
Sigur Rós - ÁTTA
Following up the orchestral Odin’s Raven Magic, Sigur Rós1 returns with another subdued ambient aural wash to accompany the changing of the seasons. I don’t really think of Sigur Rós as a warm weather band. When the leaves change color you don’t really feel like cranking up early Beach Boys, do you?
Clouds roll in with guitar swells, and migrating bird calls are the sound of Jónsi’s falsetto — whether it’s in Icelandic or his gibberish language. Their native climate finding a way through your speakers like The Ring girl climbing through your TV.
There are a lot less drums on this album, so it’s easy to lean back and not fight the waves. Instead, letting it carry you out to sea to drift, looking up at blue skies and pondering if you are looking up at the sky, or down at the water, with clouds reflected on its surface.
The cover art of the burning rainbow is supposed to symbolize the attempted (and often successful) eroding away of LGBTQ+ rights in the United States and elsewhere in the world. The music communicates that melancholy, but refuses to strip away the vestiges of hope within that community. It’s there, but sometimes overshadowed by heavy, pessimistic reverb dappled drones.
My copy is very clean sounding, with not a lot of noise, except on side 2 where I bumped the needle and might have scratched the fuck out of it. I heard some tiny blips, but couldn’t see anything after I played it (because I was going to take a picture and put it here)...
It’s just a shame that, while they have taken the reins and centralized an online fan community, it’s based around NFTs. And we all know that all that stuff turned out to be a scam, but I don’t really believe it’s a malicous act on their part. Someone probably convinced them it was a great idea and they fell for it, because of the monitary pressures put on them by being accused of tax fraud. Proof that they aren’t some elven cadre from an enchanted island. Just regular humans like all of us.
-bcp
Sigur Rós - ÁTTA [Apple Music]
You can tell I wrote some of this on my phone, because I can never remember how to get accents and symbols on my desktop.