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Monday, February 27, 2012

Sigur Rós - Heima

An introduction:
Last year, in the endless magic hour of the Icelandic summer, Sigur Rós played a series of concerts around their homeland. Combining both the biggest and smallest shows of their career, the entire tour was filmed, and now provides a unique insight into one of the world’s shyest and least understood bands captured live in their natural habitat.

The culmination of more than a year spent promoting their hugely successful ‘Takk…’ album around the world, the Icelandic tour was free to all-comers and went largely unannounced. Playing in deserted fish factories, outsider art follies, far-flung community halls, sylvan fields, darkened caves and the hoofprint of Odin’s horse, Sleipnir*, the band reached an entirely new spectrum of the Icelandic population; young and old, ardent and merely quizzical, entirely by word-of-mouth.

The question of the way Sigur Rós’s music relates to, and is influenced by, their environment has been reduced to a journalistic cliché about glacial majesty and fire and ice, but there is no doubt that the band are inextricably linked to the land in which they were forged. And the decision to film this first-ever Sigur Rós film in Iceland was, in the end, ineluctable.

Shot using a largely Icelandic crew (to minimise Eurovision-style scenic-wonder overload), ‘Heima’ - which means both “at home” and “homeland” - is an attempt to make a film every bit as big, beautiful and unfettered as a Sigur Rós album. As such it was always going to be something of a grand folie, but one, which taking in no fewer than 15 locations around Iceland (including the country’s largest ever concert at the band’s Reykjavik homecoming), is never less than epic in its ambition.

Material from all four of the band’s albums is featured, including many rare and notable moments. Among these are a heart-stopping rendition of the previously unreleased ‘Gitardjamm’, filmed inside a derelict herring oil tank in the far West Fjords; a windblown, one-mic recording of ‘Vaka’, shot at a dam protest camp subsequently drowned by rising water; and first time acoustic versions of such rare live beauties as ‘Staralfur’, ‘Agaetis Byrjun’ and ‘Von’.

Heima is the first chance to see Sigur Rós live on DVD. November 5, 2007.

* The huge horseshoe canyon at Ásbyrgi was, according to legend, formed by the hoofprint of this mythical beast.







Part 1 of 10 at YouTube:
It was voted by users of the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) as the best documentary of all time. During this tour they played two big open-air concerts at Miklatún - Reykjavík (30th July) and Ásbyrgi (4th August), as well as small scale concerts at Ólafsvík (24th July), Ísafjörður (26th July), Djúpavík (27th July), Háls, Öxnadalur (28th July) and Seyðisfjörður (3rd August) and a protest concert at Snæfellsskála (3rd August). The documentary also includes footage of an acoustic concert played for family and friends at Gamla Borg, a coffee shop in the small town Borg, on 22nd April 2007.
Heima (2007) - IMDb:
In the summer of 2006, Sigur Rós returned home to play a series of free, unannounced concerts for the people of Iceland. This film documents their already legendary tour with intimate reflections from the band and a handful of new acoustic performances.
At Amazon.com.

official sigur rós website.

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9 Comments:

Anonymous Mary said...

It's a breathtakingly beautiful place is Iceland....

I have two friends from Iceland who just left here and returned home.

They are both blue eyed and blond haired, both stunning, both uber-kind and intelligent, and both left a tangibly positive legacy here.
I am happy to report they now have two babies, a boy and a girl, who are just as beautiful and their parents.

These videos made me miss them a lot :)

2/27/2012 09:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Freedom Cobra said...

Iceland has handled the JQ quietly and effectively in the past.

http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-vilhjalmur-f04.htm

Last paragraph is a real gem.

2/27/2012 10:24:00 PM  
Blogger SAVANT said...

That music is so very Celtic. Not surprising as Celts represent about 40% of the Icelandic gene pool. However, you'll be pleased to know that this is about to change.
http://irishsavant.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-anywhere-safe.html

2/28/2012 02:23:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another gem from the JCPA page:

A Jewish-Icelandic connection was, however, confirmed when the above-mentioned president of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, married the Israeli citizen Dorrit Mussaieff on 14 May 2003, making her the world's first Jewish First Lady and first Israeli one outside Israel. Grímsson having won a third term in the June 2004 presidential election, the couple will occupy the presidential manor until at least 2008.

How fortunate for Iceland. An almost invisible minority yet, what a stroke of luck, the had a jewish/Israeli first lady!

2/28/2012 02:30:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Iceland's awesome, but Sigur Ros is pretty ho-hum. Music must be one of the only ways in which Scandinavians are not particularly distinguished among Europeans.

Rimur is pretty cool though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY7dtuYH7B0&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFAJV0DIpS0&feature=related

Before Christianity, this sort of chanting was probably found throughout Europe, but not only survives in places like Iceland and India.

2/28/2012 03:08:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tan;

Thanks for this gift of our peoples' spirit. Delicate yet strong, on the land, and of it, breathing the spirit of place, into a people.

We need this as much, nay even more, than discussions of the evil skraeling hordes that harry our souls.

Roger

2/28/2012 05:37:00 PM  
Blogger Rusty Mason said...

and what Roger just said.

2/28/2012 09:06:00 PM  
Anonymous Daybreaker said...

Thanks for calling this to my attention. I've been wanting something like this for ages but I didn't think it existed. I got the Heima DVD today and I'm very happy.

3/01/2012 11:35:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Weak.

Continentals have hung onto their balls:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_eFEMc8L-s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqVF6TWRBnE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA01ihLPQAw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue6iF1oivEw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnxqKFIiCr8

-uh

3/02/2012 06:58:00 PM  

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