Customer Reviews

Sigur Rós: Inni­ (Blu-Ray + 2 CD)

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

 

 

I confess to owning every single album Sigur Rós has released (and many of the singles), the vinyl collection, the Heima DVD, Jónsi's solo album as well as his Riceboy Sleeps project with Alex, and have seen them live twice. So you could say that I'm a pretty big fan. It should come as no big surprise that I was eagerly anticipating this live concert performance and CD set. I really wanted to like it enough to give it a full five stars, but there were some glaring weaknesses that held it back and made me grudgingly give it four stars, which I still feel may be a bit generous.

First, the good. The song selection is a splendid collection that spans all their albums. While I wish they would have included the performances of more of the songs they performed at these shows, the ones chosen are excellent. From the opening wail of Jónsi's bow on guitar, we know we're in for a real treat. The Blu-ray offers a very robust DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track that faithfully reproduces every sound, from the warm chords of Kjartan's Yamaha CP-80 and Jónsi's trilling falsetto to Georg's thumping bass and Orri's crashing cymbals. The wall of sound envelops the viewer, creating a fairly accurate rendition of the live concert experience. I'm not a fan of live recordings that have the crowd cheering and making noise the whole time, so it was to my pleasant satisfaction that audience noise is only noticeable during the applause at the end of the songs, creating no distractions at all while Sigur Rós is playing. The good part about the visuals is that the camera angles are unique and don't cut so quickly as to be distracting. The longer nature of Sigur Rós' songs tends to lend themselves to a more restrained pace of editing, and I was not at all disappointed to find the edits complemented the music very well.

Unfortunately, there is some bad, all of it relating to the video. The encode on the Blu-ray is likely quite faithful to the source, utilizing an MPEG-4 AVC with a fairly healthy bit-rate. The problem lies in the source, or more specifically, the post production manipulation that went on. I know that director Vincent Morisset likes a desaturated, vintage look, but I feel that he went so far in his manipulation, pushing everything to 11, that it had extremely detrimental results. To achieve his "vintage" look, the video had the color removed (which I was fine with), the image was softened, the highlights were often extraordinarily blown out, copious amounts of grain were added, the brightness was tweaked with a strong pulsating effect, and another effect was often employed that smeared the highlights across the screen. Now, I know that this was intentional because there are four bonus performances where only the color was removed, grain was added, and the pulsing effect was still there, but the highlights looked fine and sharp detail was left virtually unscathed. These four bonus videos looked significantly better than the main, non-bonus feature. I could see Morisset's cumbersome post-processing working fine for a music video or shorter format production, but it doesn't work so well for a 75 minute concert.

Many times while I was watching it, the video quality was so bad that it looked like a poor quality, $1 DVD bin transfer of a B-movie from the early 1900's (I'm serious, and not being facetious here). This is not at all what I would have expected from a Blu-ray of a modern production, even one trying to be stylized as this is. The softness removed all traces of fine detail, which is sad -considering the ornate costuming that Jónsi wears- and I missed out on the enjoyment of seeing the textures of the road-worn instruments. I'm not sure why the highlights were so horribly blown out either, as it destroyed highlight and midtone detail and there was significant video banding in these areas, which is an artifact of modern digital processes and detracts from the intended vintage film look. The smeared highlight effect was thankfully not employed nearly as much as these other effects, but could have still used a little more restraint. The pulsating of the light levels was also very distracting and used very heavy handedly. It was almost enough to give me a headache over the course of 75 minutes. I'm guessing it was intended to emulate the look of early twentieth century silent films, but pulsed to such a ridiculous degree that it detracted from the pleasure of the viewing experience. Again, this was an effect added in post and wasn't an artifact of the venue or lighting setup, as some of the old archival footage that was intercut had the same pulsing effect applied.

If I could have given this 3.5 stars, I would have. Rounding down to three stars seemed too harsh, as I felt that Inni successfully captured the feel, energy, and excitement of attending a live Sigur Rós show, which is no easy feat. I wish the entire concert had been processed more similarly to the bonus footage (minus the pulsating), as it managed to capture the feeling of a vintage show through desaturation and graininess while still maintaining both the fine textures of clothing, hair, and skin, as well as detail in the highlights. Perhaps 4 stars is being too generous, but watching the concert took me back many years to when I got to see them on the road and it makes me eagerly anticipate seeing them again.

Audio: 5/5
Video: 2/5
Content: 4/5
Overall: 3.5/5

I'm a fan of Sigur Ros and Bluray and since this is the first ever Sigur Ros bluray released I promptly purchased it.

You already know the tracks from the product description so I'll go right into the review.

VIDEO

I was not too happy with the video quality. I understand that it is meant to be heavily filtered and "scratchy" looking but I didn't expect this much processing. So video-wise this could've been on a VHS tape and would've looked the same. The only exception is in the Extras which contain four songs. Here the video quality was noticeably better and I wish the whole feature looked like this.

AUDIO

But the real reason I bought it was for the sound and if you've got a good audio surround set up you're going to be very very happy with this purchase. Solid DTS-HD 5.1 sound. Admittedly, sound quality is not quite as good as John Mayer: Where the Light Is - Live in Los Angeles, but its quite damn close. So that wraps it up I think.

Also, quick note on the sound - The four Extra tracks are not in DTS, they're merely 2 channel Dolby Digital. So in one scenario you've got average video but great sound and then you have much better video but average sound. Well, you cant have it all!

Now go buy it tiger!

I bought this on bluray as i did with Eddie Vedder and Chris Botti. I didn't buy either of those to watch them, i bought them to listen to music thru my 7.1 speaker system. The audio on this bluray is absolutely breath taking. Its up there with Chris Bottis live in boston for sound quality.

I am using an Oppo 93 with pure audio turned on (cancels the video stream so audio sounds even better). The video is very artsy id probably give it 3stars but don't be put off by this fantastic band and incredible HD soundtrack. This is pretty much a very high definition CD as are all concert/music blurays.

I give it 5 out of 5 stars. All other reviews have already pointed out the video is very artsy, very grainy and very deep. I personally like it but thats just me. For all who love sigur ros and want incredible SOUND i highly recommend getting this over the dvd.

Audio 5/5
Video 3/5

Have listened to it nonstop since 2PM when i received it.

Update: Have been listening to both CDs using my Oppo 93 as a cd player and both cds sound fantastic. Very surprised that there both live CDs and were given a good audio recording. So overall good buy amazing audio quality for bluray and both CDs.

A must-have for serious Sigur Ros fans. The Blu-Ray is exceptionally artsy and the sound is great. The audio cd's are pristine in sound and the audience noise is minimal, putting you "right there" in the concert. My only slight complaint is that I wish it was all longer!

Allow me to start off by saying that the primary reason I'm writing this is because I feel that several of the most readily available reviews for this product are unfairly judging it based on how crystal-clear a blu-ray's video capabilities can be. CAN be. Sure, when most people think blu-ray, they think of how the viewer can see every little detail on the screen, even down to stray facial hairs and blemishes. But must every blu-ray release take full advantage of that opportunity? And, if that release does not take full advantage of that capability, does that make the value of the product any lesser? Blu-ray provides the OPTION of this clarity, and, for the most part, Inni does not take full advantage of it, but it is my strong opinion that if this footage was as crystal-clear as many blockbuster blu-ray titles are, it would severely detract from the dreamlike atmosphere so wonderfully created by the combination of Sigur Ros' masterful musicianship and Vincent Morisset's beautiful, albeit sometimes brutal, filming and editing. There are some wonderfully abstract visuals thrown in, and many of them take advantage of the full 1080p resolution, which is nice, but I love how consistent the visuals remain, even if they are very softly focused at times. It plays to Sigur Ros' music's strengths, and only enhances the emotional depth of the performances.

Also, the audio quality is impeccable. Sigur Ros have never sounded this good on a home stereo, and I am grateful for the extra sense of immersion the 5.1 surround sound creates. The two audio discs are great as well. I love that the crowd is very muted during the performances, and then after the pieces are done, it's almost like you're cheering along with them!

Overall, this is a wonderful Sigur Ros release: artistic, emotional, and a vital addition to a rabid fan's collection, or a wonderful entry-point for a newcomer. I hope this has opened the minds of potential buyers who were turned off by the thought of the visuals of this release not being as crystal clear as they could possibly be... it's for the best!

This film is a completely different experience then Heima. While Heima is colorful, rich, spacious, and seems to take you on a journey, Inni is quite the opposite. The grainy, mostly black and white picture doesn't highlight the Icelandic landscape at all. Rather, it allows the viewer to highlight on the band itself. Many shots are so close that you can see Jonsi's sweat, the individual finger movements between frets...and often times simple images are shown to allow you to purely focus on the music at hand.

There were many times where I had to remind myself that what I was watching was actually a concert, and that they were not playing in my living room. I have never seen a live concert in this fashion, and glad I have it along with Heima to make the combined an unmatched live collection.

People must know before they buy that they are not buying a typical concert BluRay, this is a different concert experience that is totally worth it. Recommend it 100%!! Left me speechless

I love Sigur Ros' music but let me focus on the Blu-Ray DVD specifically. The music is great and the DTS 5.1 mix is very nice, but the quality of the video is horrible. It's bad even for DVD standards, but to release it on Blu-ray? Why bother.

The "artiness" of the video is interesting but annoying at the same time if you want a straight up "concert video". I found the video ignorable. Not much to look at really, and I generally like arty stuff. I could probably get into the artiness of it if the quality of the video was better. There was some "archive" footage thrown in, ok, I get it that this stuff would have poor quality, but the "concert"... the main part of the show and the whole point of making the DVD... there's just no excuse with poor quality. I can put out a video with better quality myself and I'm not a "famous rock star" :) I'm not criticizing the black and white, I like it actually, it's just that it's too grainy and the poor quality just makes it all the worse.

All In All, if you're a fan, you'll probably like this but if you're not familiar with the band, avoid it, it's not likely to win any fans sadly.

Save yourself a couple bucks and buy the 2 cd + 1 DVD package rather then this Blu-Ray version. The video is shot very lo-fi looking. There is absolutely no need for this to be on a bluray disc. I own Sigur Ros: HEIMA on DVD because it's not available as a bluray and it's still a thousand times visually richer then this bluray. In closing, If you're a sigur ros fan you'll enjoy this but make sure you enjoy it for less money on the dvd version!!!

I'm not a Sigur Ros fan, but I have a great respect for their music. Both Cd's are good, the disspaointed was the Blu Ray. There's two parts, one from the old times and one newest. The old one has a awful video quality but good audio (DTS HD). The newest has better video qualityI (as everybody expects) but the sound is just 2.0 pcm!!! I really can't understand why we can not has a great video and great audio?? Why?? Anyways the performances are right.