Reykjavík Grapevine - des. 2020, Blaðsíða 11

Reykjavík Grapevine - des. 2020, Blaðsíða 11
The end is nigh. You feel it in your bones. Each time you read the news, each time your phone beeps with fresh tidings of an- other catastrophe, there’s a sense of unravelling, a sense that we can’t pos- sibly keep hurtling from one disaster to the next. Civilisation is exhausting. Give us some catharsis. Just let the whole thing splatter onto the pave- ment already. The problem is that history never runs out of new corners to turn. The end times never really end. “In the Eddas, Ragnarök is the end of the world, but what it actually means is that when something comes to an end, something new begins,” says Georg Holm, the bassist of Sigur Rós and one of the band’s two remain- ing members. ‘Remaining’ being the operative word here: for some years now, it’s been unclear whether or not Sigur Rós had ceased to exist, following several public scandals and, most notably, the departure of drummer Orri Páll D!ra- son amid sexual assault allegations in 2018. There hasn’t been a studio album or a tour since the release of ‘Kveikur’ in 2013; keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson left around the same time and front- man Jónsi remains conspicuously ab- sent, currently holed up in Los Ange- les pursuing his own projects. And yet... It’s December, one year into a glob- al pandemic, and I’m on a Zoom call with Georg, Kjartan and long-time collaborator María Huld Markan Sig- fúsdóttir (of Amiina fame). The band have just released a new album, the long-awaited ‘Odin’s Raven Magic’— ORM, for short. Admittedly, “new” is a strong word here. In a release schedule that can best be described as glacial, ‘Odin’s Raven Magic’ was first composed in 2002 and performed just a handful of times, surviving only in whispers, leg- ends and bootlegged YouTube clips. The new release was actually recorded live in Paris and mastered in 2008, with the band inadvertently deciding to sit on it for 12 years. “There was a lot of other stuff go- ing on and it sort of fell between the cracks,” explains Georg. “It was always meant to come out, but I guess it took a lot longer than anyone expected. It’s very fitting that the album is being released now, though. It’s music that is really old and is all about the end of the world. It’s the end of 2020 and hopefully 2021 will be something com- pletely different.” Apocalyptic warnings Unpacking ORM is no easy task, large- ly because it is so unlike any other Sigur Rós release. It is perhaps one of the band’s most collaborative ef- forts to date. The piece was originally conceived of by Hilmar Örn Hilmars- son, a veteran composer as well as the current allsherjargo"i (chieftain) of the Icelandic heathen organisation, Ásatrúarfélagi". °Hilmar was commissioned by the Reykjavík Art Festival in 2002 to pro- duce an orchestral rendition of “Hraf- ngaldr Ó"ins,” a lost chapter of the Poetic Edda and the inspiration for the album’s name. Hilmar, on a self- described crusade to have the poem reinstated as part of the Edda, asked the band to join the project. They im- mediately said yes. With less than two weeks to put the piece together before the festival, the team enlisted Steindór Andersen, one of Iceland’s foremost epic poetry rhyming chanters. They then called Páll Gu"mundsson, a sculptor and the inventor of the steinharpa—a ma- rimba constructed out of stones—and headed straight out to the countryside to begin composing. As only one member of Sigur Rós— Kjartan—is able to read music, it quickly became clear they would need outside help, so María jumped in to oversee the arrangements—or, as she puts it, “save Kjartan from a nervous breakdown.” From there, this beautiful—if inac- cessible—text began to take on new life. A shot across the bow In many ways the album and the text on which it is based are warnings from the past; shots across the bow into an uncertain, terrifying future. Just as the album was composed years before its release, the poem was discovered centuries after it was first written. It was proclaimed to be a forgery in the 1980s and disqualified from editions of the Poetic Edda until 2012, when new scholarship certified it to be authentic and possibly even hundreds of years older than the oth- er Eddic poems. (It has only recently been included in published editions of the Edda.) Words: Ciarán Daly Photo: Provided by Sigur Rós Hilmar at the laptop, Steindór chanting, the giant stone harp at the bottom of the picture Info 'Odin's Raven Magic' is available on streaming , vinyl and CD at shop.grapevine.is Sigur Rós Survives Endin!s, Eddas and ‘Odin’s Raven Ma!ic’

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