<title><![CDATA[The sound of distant tundra]]></title>
<byline><![CDATA[]]></byline>
<title2/>
<title2/>
<body><![CDATA[<b>And you thought Bj├╢rk was strange. Dafydd Goff on the meeting of British stadium mopers and a bunch of less well known but equally moody, elegiac Icelanders</b>Although an esoteric pairing, this is not the first time that Sigur R├│s have appeared on the same bill as Radiohead. They shared a stage in the autumn of 2000 as the support act for the indie rockersΓÇÖ Big Top UK tour, when IcelandΓÇÖs most famous group were chosen to open for OxfordΓÇÖs most famous miserablists to set the tone for the ΓÇ£new directionΓÇ¥ that was to be the album Kid A. To an audience who thought that Icelandic music began and ended with Bj├╢rk, the spectacle of Sigur R├│s must have had the same impact as the arrival of an alien spaceship in small-town America. If lead singer J├│nsi BirgissonΓÇÖs elfin frame and androgynous vocals werenΓÇÖt sufficiently mesmerising, then his guitar technique certainly was. To ears not yet accustomed to the somnambulist drone of a guitar played with a violin bow, this was an entirely alien sound. Sigur R├│s's music is chilled. Not in the post-clubbing comedown sense, but chilled like icebergs in the Arctic Ocean. The sweeping glacial splendour of their sound conjures a feeling of aquatic inertia. Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do possesses the same womb-like weightlessness. It comprises three tracks; Ba Ba, Ti Ki and (yes) Di Do, which, in the spirit of randomness that inspired CunninghamΓÇÖs commission, were conceived to be performed in any order, although the band settled on this sequence. The result, however, is not entirely abstract, as the linearity imposes a narrative of sorts. On a first listening Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do sounds eerily reminiscent of the Exorcist score married with the 1981 David Byrne and Brian Eno collaboration, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Repeated listening reveals a more nuanced, crenellated soundscape that incorporates two sheet-fed music boxes, a glockenspiel played with a cello bow and a ΓÇ£bummsettΓÇ¥, a homemade xylophone comprising a rack of eight ballet shoes that are struck to extract scuffed sounds. Other ingredients thrown into this percussive pot are samples of baby noises and the toe-tapping of the octogenarian Merce Cunningham himself. Whereas Sigur R├│s's approach is considered and inventive, RadioheadΓÇÖs contribution appears to be an attempt to ingratiate themselves with avant-garde aristocracy. At worst it sounds like the score to a bad horror movie, at best like a moderately successful art-school project. Ultimately, their wilfully esoteric glitchtronica is unengaging. Sigur R├│sΓÇÖs contribution, however, is gripping. From the start, this is clearly more than just a side project to underline their experimental credentials and easily stands on its own merits alongside their sublime studio albums. Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do begins with a delicate music box melody that builds into the band's elegiac, expansive sound. From this platform they soar to stratospheric heights as the melody morphs into the bleeping of a lonely satellite before the whole thing disintegrates into static. The result, once again, eclipses Radiohead, and leaves the listener, like the inhabitants of that small middle-American town, compelled to decipher some beautiful alien utterances.]]></body>
