| | |  | CDs only | Home » » » Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | 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. | | | Product Details: | | | Audio CD Release Date:
| June 24, 2008 | | Studio:
| XL Recordings | | Number Of Discs:
| 1 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 91 reviews |
| | | Track Listing: | | | 1. | Gobbledigook | | 2. | Innà mér syngur vitleysingur | | 3. | Gódan daginn | | 4. | Vid spilum endalaust | | 5. | Festival | | 6. | Med sud à eyrum | | 7. | Ãra bátur | | 8. | Ãllgresi | | 9. | FljótavÃk | | 10. | Straumnes | | 11. | All Alright | |
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| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 91 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 49 found the following review helpful:
 An ad for this album in the New YorkerJul 16, 2008
By Charles Wells
"Integral Sophia"
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 found the following review helpful:
With a buzz in our ears, we play endlessly...Jun 24, 2008
By Sor_Fingers
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 found the following review helpful:
 Deliciously pop.Nov 28, 2008
By Jazzy V.
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.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
The buzz moves from you ears straight to your heart...Dec 11, 2009
By Bezdomny
"Bezdomny"
I was inspired to write this review as a result of a comment written about another amazon reviewer: "this guy hates everything." I am yet to write anything but a one star review, and I thought, will I merely be another snobbish curmudgeon eviscerating every piece of garbage that a world of commodified art tends to produce? This review is my unequivocal no! It is much easier to write a bad review, for while so much that is bad is bad in the same way, things that are truly beautiful seem to radiate their own, individual light (yes, I aped Tolstoy there!) It is difficult to write about something you love, our words can often fail to capture that which stirs in our hearts. For me, Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust is something like a counterpoint to ( ). ( ) as an album (also a 5 star work of genius in my opinion) is an epic meditation on pain and loss. I feel a great deal when I listen to it, but hope or joy are certainly not feelings that readily come to mind. The feelings are dark, intense, at time transcendental, but even with the punctuated elegance of tracks 3 and 4, I feel like I am in a place that is more akin to purgatory than heaven. In that sense, after the pain, meditation and depuration of ( ), Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust is in a sense reaching for the sky.
The music of Sigur Ros is constantly defined by a certain grappling with life and death. I think that the stark reality of death and the anxiety it creates is fundamental to their music. While ( ) seems to delve deeply into that vast crevasse of metaphysical doubt and ensuing anxiety that have become omnipresent in this post-modern era, Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust is their redemption song. ( ) tells us that we are all going to die. Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust says yes, we will die, but because life is transient we will love, cry and dance! It is life affirming in the deepest sense, raging against the dying of the light in the only way that will give us peace.
The album begins with Gobbledigoo, an effervescent, frolic into childlike abandon. You could almost hear the repeated vocal lines at the beginning, chorus and bridge as youthful taunts, but taunts lacking any malicious intent. They are simply crying to the shy kid staring at his feet in the corner, just let it all go, come and dance, it's time to play!
Dance is a word that comes to mind on the second track, seeing that Inní mér syngur vitleysingur has even forced a surly misanthrope such as myself to laugh, run and flail my limbs without abandon, whether I'm at home or frightening fellow commuters on the metro as the propulsive rhythm transfigures me into the dance commander! The bridge which swells with dynamic intensity and polyphonic grandeur is one of the most hope inspiring and blissful musical experiences that one will find anywhere. It is difficult to listen to this song and without be grateful for every moment we've been given in this life.
I would hate to refer to Gódan daginn as filler, it is calming, otherworldly and a wonderful transition between the two most expressively hopeful tracks on the album. Vid spilum endalaust gets us back onto the hope train with a similarly pounding piano/bass line which drives us forward but with that familiar and comforting (though somewhat more restrained) sense of joy and purpose.
The next seven tracks represent a slight transition. The first four are almost like the laughter, joy and celebration of life, love and friends, but festival ironically takes us out onto the verandah, cumulous clouds and a silver moon above, cigarette in hand, reflecting on the night and the mortality that comes creeping back to us when our serotonin levels start coming back down. But while there is a definite sense of melancholy that can be felt, it never reaches those depths of absolute loss that punctuate ( ). No, it is the ambivalence of death reminding us why it can be so painful, namely because we love so much. This feeling seems to permeate the rest of the album, hushed, delicate, intense love and the knowledge that one day it all ends. When we listen there is still joy still simmering in our hearts, but it's a joy tempered by time and tide. Ára bátur becomes the culmination of the ephemeral laugher of youth with the pained reminder of ultimate loss as it gradually builds into a tear wrenching crescendo that is simply sublime.
Here we are in this world, everything is fleeting, we love so deeply as the lines form on our faces and the unbearable lightness of being shines into every corner and crevice of our souls. And yet, somehow, the breeze rustling the leaves and the pallid light dripping from the sky grab our hearts and we no longer fear the terminus on this strange, beautiful journey. And as the last track reminds us, in the end, everything and everyone is all right. And yes my friends, it really is, even when it isn't...
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
It's Good to be HeimaJun 27, 2008
By Christopher Portman
"Chris"
In the Heima video (spelled Heim by iTunes but not by Sigur Rós--for whatever reason?) Sigur Rós spoke of a pervasive yearning and desire to return home--'home' being spoken of in a far deeper sense than simply returning to Iceland. Sure, they were coming off a busy touring schedule and obviously missed the beautifully bleak, dreamscape countryside, along with its lovely people--all which played vital roles in shaping the band's musical identity. I certainly have no difficulty in understanding this sentiment. The music and video footage alone were enough to inspire me to begin planning an eventual trip to that oft forgotten land of mystery and romance. Sigur Rós are obviously quite tied to this place they know so well & who can blame them? Imagine what might have come of their music had they originated from elsewhere? Likely nothing. Therefore, I venture to say that Iceland itself is far more of an influence on their musical identity than anything happening in the chart-obsessed world of pop music. And thank God for that! On the present album, 'Med sud I eyrum vid spilum endalaust,' I hear a refreshing reassessment and even a kind of reestablishment of the band's intrinsic identity with their cultural and musical heritage--something they began to express on the 'Hvarf-Heim' project. I would say the present album is the culmination of that return 'home.' The result is, quite naturally, a sound that's somewhat alien to what we're used to, but it's a sound that remains clearly rooted in the artistic identity of Sigur Rós. The primary changes, I would argue, are merely found in the album's sonic texture--most likely the result of the band having fresh production perspective. Certainly, no 'selling out' occurred. If anything, we're seeing the diametric opposite. But still, some will likely complain about the warmer, more acoustic-focused--dare I say?--'rootsier' sound. However, we must remember that people will nearly always complain when faced with change. Even when that change can so often be a very good thing. Change is a sign of life and of health. Stagnation is a sign of death and dying. When dealing with art that is authentic, pure inner-expression, at some point change becomes a 'necessary evil.' It is an inherent law of art's nature when there is spiritual evolution occurring within the artist. And I don't use the term evil in any traditional sense but more as a description of how the audience can sometimes feel when they're expecting one thing and suddenly experience another. Revulsion can be a natural, if unnecessary, reaction. But give it time. Because these are often the very works that turn out to be the purest and most bountiful step along the creative path. Personally, I think the change of sound is far less than overwhelming. In fact I welcome it with open arms and a fistful of stars. Five honestly doesn't seem quite enough.
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