VALTARI by Sigur Rós

Ambient music is bi-elemental. The first, the sound is greater than the sum of its parts. The second, it pours around you to structure the atmosphere, as opposed to pierces through it. By these parameters, ‘Valtari’ is a thematic success, and then some. Further, I do appreciate the sincerity towards the ideal behind ‘Valtari’.

Here’s the kicker, though. ‘Valtari’ is stripped-down to a degree where it treads dangerously between ‘ambient’ and ‘score’, inasmuch it constitutes, at best a segment of the perception it seeks to cloud out. ‘Ég anda’ for instance, is replete with long-drawn whale-like noises, bowing rhythms, falsetto-ed expositions with an accompanying film detailing a comprehensive tutorial on the Heimlich maneuver (“Ég anda” roughly translates to “I breathe”). ‘Ekki Múkk’ has heavy baroque influences and is complemented by bass-heaviness and a soporific tone to the vocals that is gripping. In a similar vein,  ‘Rembihnutúr’ is reminiscent of chamber music from the romantic period punctuated with bass-depth and sparse, yet powerful drumming, with Jon Por Birgisson switching to lower-register vocals between verses.

On the other hand, ‘Valtari’ has the capacity to tend towards pretentious self-indulgence and disappointing anti-climaxes. ‘Fjögur Píanó’ and ‘Valtari’ both begin excellently, with a miasma of electronic, bowed guitars, ethereal, commanding patterns exhibiting a sense of direction and progress to end with an insufficient or absent crescendo. ‘Varúð’ is in essence, a boring, slowed-down, stripped-down Coldplay track, and that’s about all.

So, with ‘Valtari’, the approach is much more minimalistic, and the conspicuous sparseness of instrumentation is unquestionably a challenging template to work with. The fact that Jon Por Birgisson insists on treating his voice as an organic instrument to meld with songs instead of leading the direction for the rest of Sigur Rós compounds that challenge. Another thing, the language is Icelandic.

I believe the subtlety of ‘Valtari’ is too blatant, and the efficiency it imbibes, excessive. I listened to most of ‘Valtari’, with, and then without the respective accompanying films, and I am convinced that without, it is at best, pleasant, and at worst, pointless. Depriving their music of a core to work around has left Sigur Rós with only these accompaniments to fall back on. Without them, ‘Valtari’ seems aim-less, and with them, each track seems like score for the accompanying film, and heavily dependent upon the quality thereof.