Sigur R?s - Hvarf/Heim
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Free Music Notes for Hvarf/Heim
Free Music Review: Great for New Listeners
Hit: 3 Stars
If you have recently been introduced to Sigur Ros, this is a nice first purchase. It has live versions of songs going back as far as 1995 that I had not heard before. It was definitely worth the purchase.Free Music Review: Worth the money regardless.......
Hit: 5 Stars
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
Free Music Review: iceland rules
Hit: 5 Stars
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.
Free Music Review: simply perfect, go get it!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
Hvarf-Heim captures the true essence of sigur r?s'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.
Free Music Review: Hvarf/Heim
Hit: 3 Stars
NPR's Bryant Park Project called their Oct. 5, 2007 interview with Sigur R?s "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 R?s, 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 R?s 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 R?s 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 ?g?tis 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 R?s 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," "Hli?malind" and "? G?r") and epic re-workings of "Von" and "Hafs?l" from their 1997 debut, Von. The mention of new Sigur R?s 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, "Gl?s?li." As someone who listened to "Gl?s?li" 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 "Gl?s?li," 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 "Hli?malind," 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 "? G?r," which trudges wearily through some guitar and cello-begotten sturm-und-drang before petering out. "Von" and "Hafs?l" 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 ?g?tis 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 R?s' 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 R?s 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 R?s followers may actually value it the least; for them, that eerie feeling of d?j? 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 R?s 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.