Released 20.07.09 (Parlophone)


Riceboy Sleeps is the debut music collaboration by Sigur Ros singer Jonsi Birgisson and his partner Alex Somers, and anyone acquainted with Sigur Ros’ output will immediately find themselves in familiar territory here.

It seems Birgisson has not been harbouring a secret passion for hardcore German techno  or frenetic, staccato punk which he has been itching to release onto the world, instead, from opener ‘Happiness’ onwards, Riceboy Sleeps takes from a palette of swelling orchestration, burbling electronics and slowly unwinding washes of ambient noise.  Where this album differs from Sigur Ros is in its lack of the kind of monolithic post-rock the band often deploy on songs such as ‘Danarfrejnir’ and which periodically snaps the listener’s attention to focus. Instead we have untroubled, sedentary music which seems designed to conjure images of bucolic innocence and purity.

Sometimes this can be very pretty indeed – ‘Atlas Song’ features a submerged, disembodied choir and recalls Aphex Twin at his most benevolent. Standout track ‘Boy 1904’, meanwhile, creates a sense of palpable peace as it drifts serenely past. It’s all undeniably gorgeous and the perfect antidote to blood pressure-raising daily stress, but Riceboy Sleeps suffers a little from a lack of variety. With each song unfurling at the pace of a narcoleptic snail and with most tracks segueing into the next, it becomes almost a chore to keep one’s mind focused on the intricacies of each piece. Is ‘All the Big Trees’, with its glacial piano, any more or less pretty than the contented organ drones of ‘Howl’? While they never stray into the territory of such heinously self-satisfied coffee table artists like Enya or Enigma, it’s tempting to believe Birgisson and Somers got a great deal of pleasure out of making this music while giving little thought to how much pleasure it would give its audience. The other element which stops this album consuming one’s full attention is that it is something of an austere, chilly work.

Unlike great ambient albums, Boards of Canada’s Geogaddi, say, or Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, Riceboy Sleeps lacks warmth, making it more the musical embodiment of a cliff face than a verdant forest – beautiful and impressive in its severity, but somewhat uninviting.

www.myspace.com/riceboysleeps

Posted In Album Reviews, Jul 19 2009. Words - Richard