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Sigur Ros
If ever a CD should come with a warning sticker, this is it. Not for the usual reasons of language, etc. – sung in Icelandic, none of it is even remotely comprehensible – but for health reasons. Full of dreamy, repetitive mood pieces, I thought it would make for great late-night listening, and it does; the only problem is that after five separate attempts, I could not recall anything past track four. Every single time, it lulled me to sleep in less than thirty minutes! To solve the narcoleptic problem, I decided to take this CD with me for a driving excursion. At first, ‘Agaetis Byrjun’ seemed like the perfect companion for a trip on a bland, personality-free roadway like the New Jersey Turnpike. Then, the narcolepsy kicked in. By track four, I had trouble retaining consciousness while driving to this music. It evokes such a relaxed dreamscape of imagery that it was impossible to remain alert, and I had to pull over, get out of the car and walk around. As far as I’m concerned, this disk should be stickered to warn potential listeners that driving to this music without excess amounts of caffeine can be extremely dangerous.
I doubt that I have ever heard music that is so sleep-inducing. Even Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Airports’ doesn’t come close, since it operates at a level that doesn’t engage your conscious mind. Sigur Ros does. Its resonant overtones cause the chord progressions to bleed into one another, like a piano in a metal-domed room with the damper pedal depressed. While listening, you cannot help but to envision endless landscapes and contemplate eternity. There must be a lot of time for contemplation in Iceland, since each song (that I can remember) consists of redundant progressions that move around like a dense fog, taking eight minutes or so before they dissipate and move on to the next very similar composition. On one level, it is all quite beautiful, but the manner in which it manipulates my consciousness (literally) is unnerving.
Grade: 
 
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