Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust

Sigur Rós | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 24, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: XL Recordings
• ASIN: B001ACY8D2
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,705 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #18 in Music > Alternative Rock > Indie & Lo-Fi > Dream Pop
  • #22 in Music > Miscellaneous > Experimental Music

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As epic as ever... entrancing" --Wired

"The reworkings are subtle... beautiful and are slightly warmer and even more fragile than the
originals" --Billboard

Product Description

Inspired by the unfettered feeling of the acoustic performances filmed during Heima, Sigur Rós
adopted a looser approach in creating their fifth album Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust.
The album consequently is fresher and more human than anything they ve previously
recorded.
Rough edges, cracked notes, and the sound of fingers on strings are audible resulting in tracks
(e.g. Íllgresi ) that prove to be the band's sparsest and most affecting work to date. Worry not
though, plenty of electric guitar can be heard throughout the album ensuring Sigur Rós
commitment to challenging sonic limitations.
Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust is truly a groundbreaking album for Sigur Rós. It s the
first time they ve attempted to write, record, mix, release and support (by touring) an album in
the same year. Notoriously known for their laborious writing/recording style and their Icelandic
roots, Sigur Rós decided to record an album outside of Iceland for the first time. Recording,
mixing and mastering sessions took place in such un-Reykjavik cities as New York (Sear
Sound and Sterling Sound), London (Abbey Road and Assault & Battery) and Havana. The
result is pretty much their leave home album, the anti-Heima.
The opening track, Gobbledigook , is a manifesto setter with its shifting/no time signature. On
the last track, All Alright , Sigur Rós find themselves singing a song solely in English for the
first time. The seventh track, Ára Bátur , was performed with a full orchestra and the London
Oratory Boys Choir. This was recorded in one take with no overdubs and the result was 90
people playing at once and just one perfect take. This is their first album working with Flood
(U2, Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey) and the first since their debut to not be recorded with Ken
Thomas. It was a true co-production, one that found Sigur Rós breaking out of old
molds/habits.
The cover artwork is a photo taken from a flyer for Ryan McGinley s most recent photo
exhibition in NYC, I Know Where the Summer Goes , and the image captures perfectly the
spirit of the album, one of free-spirited happiness and exploration.
The band will be touring the US throughout the fall of 2008 to support Med Sud I Eyrum Vid
Spilum Endalaust.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An ad for this album in the New Yorker, July 15, 2008

By 

Charles Wells "Integral Sophia" (Sedona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (Audio CD)

An ad for the album in the New Yorker, with nudes running across a country road on the cover, caught my eye. I found myself trying to translate the
words on the cover, and I couldn't even figure out the language. Even the script was unusual. It would be weeks before release date but I got to hear this incredibly powerful, yet simple and awesome music, for the first time on the internet, and it was love at first hearing. New to the computer, it was
also the first album purchase via the net. The music was like nothing
I've heard in my seventy seven years. I can't get over that I am hooked on what I thought would be essentially music for young people. This music is for all ages. Songs five, six, and seven are staggeringly beautiful and give me
horripilations and exaltation ever time I hear it. I have not yet listened to other works of Sigur Ros's. But this album contains music that reaches agelessness; stark, brilliant, spellbinding.
For some reason, the DVD would not play on my music system in the one room, but did on another system in the kitchen, and played on my Mac Pro,
where I downloaded it, and will transfer it to the160MG iPod, as soon as I learn how.

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With a buzz in our ears, we play endlessly..., June 24, 2008

By 

Sor_Fingers (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (Audio CD)

That is what Sigur Ros's 2008 studio album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, translates to in English. This album sees the band breaking some new ground. This album is essentially a follow-up to two different Sigur Ros projects: the first being the emotional tour-de-force Takk... and the band's recent documentary, Heima, in which the band travels all over the Icelandic countryside doing shows for the people of the villages, many of them with very stripped down acoustic sets. If you've heard the first single, Gobbledigook, and you think Sigur Ros has sold out, think again. Granted this song is very much outside of their artistic tendencies, but this opening cut is really an outlier on the album. The rest of the album is very much a more optimistic, nonetheless, very Sigur Ros album. While we hear songs of epic scale like "Festival" and "Ara batur," we also hear more folky, stripped down arrangements from the band, most notably in "Illgresi." I think Sigur Ros is trying with this album to appeal to a broader audience without losing their soul to the music industry, and I think they've done it. This is evidenced by the band using more conventional and complicated song structures rather than repeating structures that unfold in an ebb and flow kind of way, varied instrumentation, shorter song lengths, shorter overall album length, and surprisingly enough, one song with ENGLISH lyrics. I think the band has found a niche with this album, being able to appeal to more than the people who listen to what Pitchfork media and Bob Boilen tell them to listen to, and yet, I think Pitchfork media and Bob Boilen will also tell us to listen to them. I think that with Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, the music snobs (of which I am a proud member) and the general public will find common ground. And with the nude frolickers on the cover art, who wouldn't at least be intrigued by this quartet from Iceland led by a guy who prefers to play his guitar with a cello bow?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Deliciously pop., November 28, 2008

By 

Jazzy V. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (Audio CD)

The fifth studio album from Iceland's supremely inventive dreamscapists is their poppiest outing to date.
A happy album from Sigur Rós sounds like an unlikely concept.
The band specialise in music that is about as sunny as an Arctic winter - vast tundras of sound, dark with melancholy and loneliness. So their fifth album comes as a surprise.
The brisk opener, "Gobbledigook", all jumped-up drums and manic vocals, sets the tone: its poppy energy crackles on through much of this collection.
But then along comes a song that changes everything. From innocuous beginnings - Jónsi Birgisson's fragile voice, a lone piano - "Ára Bátur" swells into an epic, swallowing a whole choir and the London Sinfonietta.
It is so ambitious and successful a piece of music that it threatens to overwhelm the surrounding tracks, making what came before seem frivolous and what follows, almost inconsequential.
No matter: for this one uplifting, goosebump-raising moment, it is worth buying the whole album.