GREAT ODIN: SIGUR RÓS RETURN!
Icelandic band set date for their orchestral album inspired by Norse mythology.
Sigur Rós finally release their long-lost orchestral work, Odin’s Raven Magic, on December 4. Available on the Krunk label via Warner Classics, the monumental 70-minute piece was recorded live in September 2004 at La Grande Halle De La Villette in Paris, with the choir of the Schola Cantorum of Reykjavik and L’Orchestre Des Laureats Du Conservatoire National De Paris.
The work was a collaboration between the post-rockers and Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, a leading figure in Iceland’s music scene and also a pagan high priest and expert in the country’s history and mythology. He approached the band with the concept of a work based on the poem Odin’s Raven Magic from the Edda, Iceland’s rich medieval literary canon.
In the tale, the god Odin sends two ravens to survey the world, and the birds bring back news of “ominous signs that foretell the end of the world of both gods and men.”
“It’s a very visual poem,” says Hilmarsson, “with images all about falling down, and a world freezing from north to south. It was an apocalyptic warning.” He adds: “Today, Iceland is involved in environmental issues surrounding hydroelectric power and the destruction of the highlands. We are being warned again.”
The music bringing Odin’s Raven Magic to life is aptly complex, dramatic and portentous, with one signature sound coming from a huge, five-octave marimba made of 54 unprocessed stones.
Hilmarsson and the band are joined by vocalist Steindór Andersen – a specialist in traditional Icelandic song with whom Sigur Rós recorded 2001 EP Rímur – and Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir of Amiina, who played a large part in arrangements for the orchestra and choir.
The piece was commissioned for the Reykjavik Arts
Festival of May 2002, but received its debut performance the month before in London, at a sold-out Barbican Centre.
“We only performed it a few times after that,” says the band’s Georg Holm,“but we never really found the right time to release it. It just feels right to do it now, to let go of it.
“And I do think it’s perfect timing – the world is going to hell and the poem is about how the gods know that this is the end for everyone!”
But he adds cautiously: “As I understand it, when there is an end something else begins.” GRM
“The world is going to hell and the poem is about how the gods know that this is the end.”