Sigur Ros + Amiina Live St James Theatre Auckland 19-April-06
Wednesday 26 April 2006 at 1:41 pm. Monday night we joined the stream of people lining up outside the St James theatre to see Sigur Ros.I'd picked up their '()' album about 18 months ago and had just recently picked up their latest album 'Takk' which they were touring globally.
Luckily Karen saw that they were playing live back in January so we picked up tickets and organised roadtrip to see them. Figuring they were obscure and Icelandic I figured no one would be going to the gig.
How wrong I was - we joined a queue of several hundred people waiting to get in. The venue turned out to be standing room only front of stage but the seated positions were only a third full (tix were twice the price). Being an old fart with a healthy dose of tinnitus already I figured we'd go with the seated option. As it was the seats were designed for midgets and the legroom was atrocious making for a slightly uncomfortable gigging experiance.
Opening for SR was Amiina - this quartet played a kind of funky playground instrumental thing. If you didn't see them on stage you would think you'd walked in on a music performance by a group of 8 year olds banging away on xylophones, bells, water-glasses, bowed saw and occassional violin/cello with PowerBook accompaniment. Actually a much groovier sound than you'd expect considering the instruments involved (kind of Tortoise-esque). Amiina also provide the backing strings for SR. You can listen to a track off their AnimaminA EP called Hemipode. I think I'll be ordering this EP shortly.
Sigur Ros started and finished with an apocalyptic intro and finale backlit behind a huge gauze curtain onto which a suitably visually stunning lightshow was projected from various sources in the theatre. Very cool and the intro set the tone for the entire concert - pristine sound, volume was perfect and the songs themselves were performed beautifully. About the only complaint would be that the vocalist could be a little samey and it would have been nicer if the songs dynamics were left to do their thing sans vocals.
Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended - if you ever get a chance to see them play definitely go. One of the best concerts I've seen in years.
A much better review of them live is at Popmatters.
Sigur Ros have a healthy appreciation for sharing music - you can download a number of tracks from their site here. They also host an FTP site of fan-made audio/video recordings too.
Now I need to get my hands on their Agaetis Byrjun album . . .
