Plus: it’s quite clear that MUNA are going to be huge
What is it with Icelanders and mushrooms? Just weeks after Bjork releases a fungal-themed album, Fossora, Sigur Ros appear on stage with dozens of sporey lights illuminating the gloom.
It’s boom time for mycophiles, but with Sigur Ros the link makes a certain kind of sense. Their aesthetic is not so much post-rock as glacial. For almost three decades the Icelandic quartet have been making large-screen, epically elemental music: celestial choral pieces, art-house concert films, ambient soundscapes and the occasional relatively conventional rock and pop song. Whether aware of it or not, you will have heard ‘Hoppipolla’ on numerous BBC nature documentaries. We won’t hear it tonight, though. Instead, this long show encompasses all that is most entrancing and frustrating about the band. Having previously flirted with arenas, they’re back in theatres, with the forbidding demeanours of men determined to make us work for our pleasure.
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