KRUNK

Christmas came early for Sigur Rós fans. After the second solo album by singer/guitarist Jónsi, Shiver, released in October 2020, the Icelanders now deliver a piece that has been almost twenty years in the making, a live performance of Odin's Raven Magic, an oratorio that has attained cult status, first performed in 2002 at London's Barbican Centre by Sigur Rós, MAO pioneer Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson aka HÖH, the singer of rimur (traditional Icelandic poems) Steindór Andersen, accompanied by the Schola Cantorum in Reykjavik and the London Sinfonietta. Almost two decades later, Sigur Ros offers a veritable all-star game of Icelandic music, with the version recorded on 28 and 29 September 2004 in Paris at La Grande Halle de la Villette in the company of the Orchestre des Lauréats du Conservatoire national de Paris and the Schola Cantorum in Reykjavik, with arrangements by Kjartan Sveinsson (Sigur Rós's pianist from 1998 to 2013) and Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, from the Reykjavik indie pop group Amiina, as well as the stone marimba built specially for the occasion by Páll Guðmundsson. All this help was certainly needed for this audiovisual show based on a 500-year-old Icelandic poem that tells of the banquet of the gods in Valhalla, held as signs appear announcing the end of the world. An hour of grandiose music on a legendary theme with a new object of worship for Sigur Rós followers. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

The frontman of Icelandic band Sigur Rós, Jónsi, had tried his hand at a solo career ten years ago with the album Go. In order to get the ball rolling in this direction again, it took an offer from A. G. Cook, the founder of PC Music and Charli XCX’s creative director... Being one of the most sought after producers around, A. G. Cook’s offer was hard to refuse. Why would Jónsi say no to a collaboration that would attract alt-pop, prog rock and experimental fans? The album kicks off with Exhale, a track with an apt title that uses synth samples modelled on Jónsi’s breaths. Then we’re thrown into the future with Hold before being taken in the complete opposite direction with the very 80s Cannibal (featuring Liz Fraser from the Cocteau Twins). Apart from the dancefloor track Salt Licorice with Swedish icon Robyn and a few moments that are a bit ’too much’, Shiver is an album made for tripping out under a duvet. There are haunting ambient passages and amazing atmospheric songs like Granade and Beautiful Boy on which Jónsi brings out his famous falsetto. This is certainly a record that lives up to its promises. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz