Riceboy Sleeps: S/T

When someone like Jonsi of Sigur Ros decides to form a side-project, you should probably take it quite seriously.

Riceboy Sleeps is the incarnation of Jonsi and his boyfriend Alex Somers artistic endeavours and together, they make quite the beautiful duo (in a music-based way of course...).

The music holds ten times the sparsity that Sigur Ros possess (which is saying something) and never touches on the post-rock theatrics that the band are so good at. We are not here to enjoy Sigur Ros however; we are here to witness the even quieter, even more gentle side of Jonsi.

Happiness sets the listener up for the next hour of listening by hypnotising and smothering your ears with yawning strings that grow and shrink in tone and volume (you may have heard it on the recent Dark Was The Night compilation). The majority of the record remains within the same ambient territory as this so it could also be seen as a forewarning; if you were expecting anything else but tender instrumentalism then you are not going to get on with this entire experience.

Stokkseyri glimmers like a lake set deep in the depths of a mountain-scape and though there seems to be so little going on; there's also so many intricacies to explore. It stands at just over seven minutes in length but the journey feels over all to quickly. Its lucky then, that the rest of the album forms similar panoramic landscapes to equally fall in love with.

In the faultless way that Sigur Ros transformed the drastic and barren Icelandic landscapes into musical form, Riceboy Sleeps shows the arctic tundras and rolling mountains of the same country; it twinkles, shines, shimmers and stretches out for miles at a time. One, simple chord can be held on reverb for minutes at a time as only gentle, angelic and other-worldly vocals float hazily on top, like low-clouds in a stunning valley.

It's understandable that many will be expecting more than what the record holds but if this is your opinion, you really need to look underneath the sparsity and into the atmospherics the record creates. Choir like vocals interlace with harmonic guitar feed-back as the faintest of white-noise rises in the background. It transforms the instruments into imaginative tools of creationism that work slowly but professionally, carving the majestic beauty that is this record.

It's not as much of an epic spectacle as Jonsi's other work with Sigur Ros (nor is it any where near as complex) but it's just as inspired and conjures similar emotions and musical views for all to enjoy. The man's creativity is almost unsurpassed as far as we're concerned and this new branch of work only solidifies his legendary status amongst the best contemporary musicians of today.