JÓNSI & ALEX SOMERS

Riceboy Sleeps KRunK Remastered triple vinyl reissue of an ambient orchestral modern classic.

First released 10 years ago, and now reissued to coincide with a series of concerts where it’s being performed live for the first time, Riceboy Sleeps is the definition of a modern ‘sleeper hit’. Whereas a record might previously have acquired cult status via word of mouth or references in the music press, according to the official website, the album has gained recent, cultish popularity thanks to streaming sites’ playlists. It’s no surprise that services such as Spotify increasingly dictate the way we encounter new music, but considering that Riceboy Sleeps is 67 minutes of wordless, ambient orchestral dreamscape, there must be a lot of people out there clicking on playlists tagged “soothing”, “comforting”, and “please-make-it-goaway” these days.

But that’s not to denigrate the album. Yes, there’s a lot of instrumental mood music that ticks the above boxes, but rarely is it as transcendent and, at times, as achingly beautiful as this. As a member of ecstatic post-rockers Sigur Rós, Jónsi has plenty of previous form in this area, but Riceboy Sleeps – made with his partner Alex Somers – uses drones, strings and voices to create a powerful yet ghostly sequence of songs that manage to be uplifting and elegiac, joyful and melancholic, all at the same time.

The nine songs work as a piece, with various elements recurring, but some songs are worth highlighting. Happiness builds from an undulating cosmic drone into an intensity of Góreckilike strings before dissolving into a scattering of piano; Atlas Song in particular harks back to the first wave of New Age music, voices in the ether amid a crackling facsimile of heaven; Boy 1904 samples the last known castrato singer, an engineered angel brought back to life. This reissue also includes the previously limited All Animals EP, Chapter One of which ventures into slightly heavier territory.

Like field recordings from another world, Riceboy Sleeps is a salve for embittered times.