Customer Reviews

Hvarf / Heim (Dig)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sonic awesomeness!Keep in mind folks, this is some of the music from the film Heima, a RETROSPECTIVE you knuckleheads. A couple new tunes. I think the 'electric' is better than the acoustic and I find I Gaer just incredible. I really don't understand the critique that the song is bombastic. It is soaring. Also remember, this band makes music THEY love. They don't make music for us. If we like it, great. If not, great.

Having been to Iceland, the music just fits the country. If you have not been, plan a trip sometime. Incredibly gorgeous but bring lots of money!!!

My favorite song is Hafsol. Bring tears to my eyes every time.

Enjoy! (or not :))

This is one of the most phenomenal pieces of music my ears have ever had the privilege of listening to. It is such a story of ups and downs and beauty and everything being right in the world. I don't think I have ever truly connected so well with melody such as this album. I truly like all of Sigur Ros' prior productions, but some of the songs on this album are truly breathtaking. I highly recommend this album, and if you've never experienced post-rock instrumental music before, download this album, find a good pair of earphones that sound amazing, and prepare yourself for quite the experience.

NPR's Bryant Park Project called their Oct. 5, 2007 interview with Sigur Rós "possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media." Interviewer Luke Burbank lobbed the musicians unanswerable questions like "Did you think you would be the kind of band that sold two million records?" to which they would look at each other and eventually mumble a thinly veiled kiss-off. It was painful. But perhaps the band simply has as difficult a time talking about their music as we do. When so many of us listen to Sigur Rós, we try to describe it in terms of how it makes us feel, reaching higher and higher for adjectives that might explain its emotional power, but we can't do it. Sigur Rós is a spiritual experience at best--an angel laying its hands on you and flying you above the clouds toward an exalted place.

But if Sigur Rós has a weakness--and it's a significant one--it's that they've been providing this experience for us over and over again since 1999's Ágætis Byrjun. No other band sounded like them and few were as gorgeous, which legitimized their stagnation for nearly a decade. Hvarf/Heim marks the first time that this weakness seriously detracts from enjoying the music, despite how pretty it can be. It's a lovingly packaged album, full of regal melodies, stretched choirboy chants, sweeping orchestration and the occasional uplifting crescendo, like everything else in their oeuvre.

Granted, Hvarf/Heim isn't the ideal place for Sigur Rós to experiment. Not quite a proper album, this double-disc is part new material, part reinterpretations and part live recordings. Hvarf ("disappear") is the superior disc, offering three new songs ("Salka," "Hliómalind" and "Í Gær") and epic re-workings of "Von" and "Hafsól" from their 1997 debut, Von. The mention of new Sigur Rós songs should get any fan worked up, but the problems begin with "Salka," which contains a vocal passage ripped from the buildup of Takk's blistering opener, "Glósóli." As someone who listened to "Glósóli" religiously when it first came out, I couldn't help but feel cheated, though at this point in the band's career, they're only cheating themselves. It turns out that the rest of "Salka" plays out like an inverted version of "Glósóli," treading a similar structural path in the same key, but wimping out whenever it threatens to burst.

So, properly speaking, Hvarf contains two new songs. The winner is "Hliómalind," a lush rocker that feels perfect at just under five minutes. It's also the only song here that hints at the band's growth, moving closer to the majestic ebbs and flows of shoegaze than anything they've put to tape. The loser is "Í Gær," which trudges wearily through some guitar and cello-begotten sturm-und-drang before petering out. "Von" and "Hafsól" trump their poorly recorded originals and should give diehard fans something to celebrate. Both are on the long side at ten minutes each, but they reward patient listening if you're willing to forget that they could have appeared on Ágætis Byrjun, Takk, or ( ) and no one would have noticed.

Heim ("home") gathers six live tracks from the group's 2006 Icelandic tour, in which they played in various natural locations: green fields, caverns, fjords, and so on. Sigur Rós' music lends itself to Iceland's towering beauty, and they know it: They're releasing a tour DVD, called Heima, later this November. Those who have seen Heima claim it's spectacular, but without the visuals, Heim sounds like it was recorded in a spotless studio. These tracks are all acoustic (duh, how do you plug a guitar into a fjord?), which make them both amazingly boring and extremely enlightening, as Sigur Rós has never sounded this naked. Too often, however, these versions deviate little from their originals structurally, and the up-front pianos and vocals demonstrate that the songs themselves don't carry much weight--a problem that befalls many acoustic sets.

The question of "value" often comes up with inessential releases, and how much Hvarf/Heim is worth probably depends on who you are. Loyal Sigur Rós followers may actually value it the least; for them, that eerie feeling of déjà vu won't be worth its ludicrous $16 sticker price. On the other hand, new and casual listeners may find the record beautiful, dazzling, and moving, but that's also part of the problem: With Hvarf/Heim, Sigur Rós have entered the realm of mere words for perhaps the first time since Von, and the adjectives we'll use to describe it won't be quite so sublime anymore.

This album is worth the money regardless of the fact that it seems to be in length of a double EP. I have just recently found out about this amazing group just three weeks ago after hearing Glosoli and Svefn-G-Englar that a friend sent me in a bulletin. After that experience, I'm having a hard time listening to ANY other band. From what I have read, the two tracks I just mentioned that opened me up and blew me apart happen to be alot of fans favorites. So I went to the store to buy this(instead of TAKK or Agaetis Byrjun) thinking that if it was anything like what I've heard than I'll at least be up to date even though far behind with the classics. Well, I haven't stopped listening to it(Hvarf/Heim)yet and I am curently saving to buy ALL their music. This Album is so devastatingly good, I get dizzy every time I even think about it.
Both Cds are TOP NOTCH, the second being an Acoustic Live album that puts to shame all live albums I've ever heard before......Most everybody would never guess it's a live recording if it didn't say so in the sleeve (beautiful art to go with the music too!). AMAZING!!! Buy this now and if you're like me and just recently got into Sigur Ros, this is an EPIC place to begin!!! It will be sure to give you the NEED to go out and acquire all their other records. It leaves you wondering how in the world they could make SO MANY albums that supposingly compare to this (dont quite know yet,Hvarf/Heim is all I got so far).....to all new fans.....this is a sure-fire Winner, ya can't go wrong, and to Sigur Ros, you are the most beautifully haunting band I have ever heard...PEACE

After the glorious "Takk," I was looking forward to yet another tour de force, but this double-disc is a poor follow-up.

First, the live CD sounds nearly identical to the studio recordings. Usually live CDs are more energetic, powerful, and longer versions of songs. Not so here. If anything, the songs are shorter and more subdued. Also, there's no sounds from the crowd cheering, or introductions of any sort from the band. While the sound quality is good, the experience was a let-down. The live disc is completely pointless if you already own the studio recordings.

Second, the EP contains only 4 unreleased songs, and, while they're good, they're not worth buying the whole set for. Pick them up as MP3s instead.

This group offers sounds from the edge of the world and does so in a compelling and transcendent style which reflects, in a auditory, symbolic way, the austere yet magnificent beauty of Iceland itself.
Get it and listen.

Hvarf-Heim captures the true essence of sigur rós'particular universe. It's the mixture of some of their best songs previously recorded and a brand new set (Hvarf) of wonderful pieces of art, please listen "I gaer" "hafsol"and "staralfur". Sometimes I wonder how a group of 4 guys can make this amazing music, they should be proud of what they're doing:
remaking music and creating something new,fresh and f...ing GOOD.
Thanks guys. Next step in my mind: visit Iceland.

First of all, Hvarf/Heim is not so much a follow-up as a detour. It offers 70 minutes of music spread over two CDs: the first featuring rerecordings of tracks from their 1994 debut album Von, plus outtakes, the second acoustic versions of better-known songs.

From "The Guardian" : "Despite its tangential nature, the first CD encapsulates both what's admirable and what's off-putting about Sigur Rós' music. There's Salka, which shows off both their way with a winding guitar melody and enviable capacity to sound simultaneously wistful and triumphant. Hafsól, meanwhile, demonstrates the band's ability to alight on a sound that's unfathomably appealing: in this case a drumstick being rattled against bass guitar strings, a noise that, improbably enough, turns out to have the same warm, comforting quality as the smell of freshly brewed coffee. But in the debit column, there is Í Gaer, which wobbles unsteadily along the line that separates winning grandiosity from hollow bombast, and the creeping feeling that for all their admirable sonic experimentation, there's often something slightly formulaic about the results.

For every moment you're carried along by a song's sweeping loveliness, there's an equivalent moment where you find yourself wondering if their sound isn't a little uniform for its own good: everything proceeds at the same pace, the vocals always wail, enveloped in reverb, you're never that far from a dramatic surge in volume or a string-augmented climax.

It's a feeling that the second disc does little to dispel. The tracks all seem to have been taped in deserted community halls in rural Iceland, or outdoors by fjords and waterfalls, but they're not quite as atmospheric as their intriguing recording locations suggest.

Indeed, most of the time, the acoustic versions don't actually sound that different to the originals. Ágætis Byrjun and the instrumental Samskeyti take on a marginally tweedier quality with their guitar effects replaced by a harmonium. The version of Von is a little less cavernous than its incarnation on CD1.

On Vaka, the experiment yields real dividends - with the echo stripped away, Birgisson's vocals take on an unexpected visceral intensity - but the rest sounds homogenous: like beautiful background music."

However, this is not a bad thing. As a double CD, this is perhaps the least accessible of the entire Sigur Ros catalog, simply because of the nature of the material. You can't really call this a 'proper' studio album. One thing is clear though - if you're into atmosphere, and if you own a really snappy sound system, this is the kind of album you should be buying.

Personally, albums such as this work for me because I have a personal relationship with my music over my headphones, and occassionally venture to play them on my music system as well. "Hvarf/Heim" sounds totally different on both my Ipod, and on my music system (I have the latest Philips home theater). I can't explain it. So if youre planning on buying the CD to rip it to your Ipod, or if you plan to just download the audio files, you're missing the big picture. This is big, sweeping mood music that should envelop a room.

Five Stars. Iceland has never sounded more inviting.

My life can now be divided into two halves. Before I discovered Sigur Ros, and after. Before, I'd fire up some Matt Good, some Foo Fighters, a little Kings of Leon, Offspring, etc. I don't know how to get back to that world, and I don't want to.

The English language does not contain the words to describe this kind of music. The closest word I could come up with is Transcendent.

I bought this CD, yes, I bought it as I will buy all this band's CD's, even though I could easily pirate every single track elsewhere. For several reasons. 1. Sigor Ros deserves it. 2. If anything happened to my computer, I could still listen to these tracks sans my mp3 collection. This music has shown my a whole new reality, one I will explore to its extreme. If you're reading these reviews because you're trying to decide if this music is worth the buy, then yes it is! Whatever interest brought you here in the first place, you'll not be disappointed.

Do you like strong catchy hooks in your music?
Do you like songs that last about three minutes?
Do you likes insane guitar riffs?

Well, if you do, this probably isn't the band for you. However if you like music that is emotional and atmospheric, I can't recommend this band enough.

On the subject of this Hvarf/Heim, it's good, but not great. This is a great album to start with, if you've haven't heard the band before. But if you are a die-hard Sigur Ros fan, you've probably heard most of this stuff before. Hvarf is a collection of b-sides. Heim is a collection of live material.

Heim dwarfs Hvarf in comparison (as Hvarf was a little forgettable to me). However, the songs on Heim stem out from the live DVD released by the band, Heima. And while both discs are good, I wouldn't recommend buying this if you already own Heima, as the DVD contains more performances by the band, unless you are a die-hard Sigur Ros fan.

If you're just a beginner though, this set is a good starting point.