Temple Theatre
A converted church is not a bad place to be baptised by the sepulchral sound of Icelandic wunderkinds Sigur Ros.
The Temple Theatre was packed with the faithful who listened reverently for 2-1/2 hours as the band's eerie, icy music swept into the deepest caverns of the soul. In other words, they were deadly.
Since they emerged from the lunar landscape of their home country, Sigur Ros have elicited ecstatic responses from audiences in Europe and the US. Their third album, Agtis Byrjun (A good start), has melted the hearts of the hardest critics. Q Magazine called it the last great record of the millennium. Its not so much the shock of the new which has everybody in a lather, its the refreshing splash of something different.
How different are Sigur Ros is apparent from the first shards of ambience which rumble from the quartet onstage. The music has been described as glacial, and when the band are in full voice it certainly feels like you're being crushed by a wall of ice-cool sound.
Guitarist Jonsi uses a cello bow to wring out great, leviathan echoes from his instrument, while keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson navigates the soundscape. When the thundering drums of Orri Pall Dyrason kick in, its like an icequake in the head.
Most startling, however, is the voice of Jonsi, a high-pitched siren's wail which is both achingly beautiful and strangely frightening. He sings in a mixture of Icelandic and his own, made-up language which he calls Hopelandish; sometimes it sounds tantalisingly like English, but most of the time its alien and utterly compelling.
Together, all these elements could have just added up to another weird, foreign band, but in the hands of Sigur Ros, the music becomes a living thing, a slow-breathing behemoth coated in sharp bristles of sound.
