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Sigur Rós - Takk... CD (album) cover

TAKK...

Sigur Rós

 

Post Rock/Math rock

3.89 | 353 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Australian
Prog Reviewer
3 stars I remember the day when I discovered this band. It was about two months ago when I was talking to Dalezilla on the forum when he mentioned something about listening to "Takk."(which means thank you) I asked who they were and what genre they were in, and after receiving the information I looked up the band and listened to some of the free samples. The first song I listened to was "Saeglopur", I was immediately hooked by this song (and still am hooked) and I rather hastily went onto eBay and bought a copy of "Takk. "This was the first event in a sequence of annoyances. Firstly, after ordering the CD I went down to my local store and looked under alternative and, to my distress found Sigur Rós. The next annoying thing was that "Takk. " was cheaper here than the import. I however brought "()" and I wasn't all that impressed with it.

After being seven days overdue (14 days of waiting) I was told that the CD would be delayed another seven to fourteen days away. So after waiting a grand total twenty days I finally received "Takk." and I was relieved. Soon after listening to the album I forgot about the annoyances and enjoyed this beautiful ambient piece of music. So the combination of Dalezilla and Sigur Rós started an all new phase of music for me, post- rock. I have discovered among this genre one unspoken masterpiece in "The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place" by Explosions in the Sky and another in "F# A#" by Godspeed You Black Emperor. This genre has continued to amaze me and, although most of the music in Post-rock is either non-existent in Australia or is over $30, it is worth it.

Sigur Rós seems to be the most prominent Post-Rock band along with Godspeed You Black Emperor and both have achieved high success, for prog bands. Sigur Rós's "Takk." is by far their most successful and I was very surprised when I found where it charted, #16 UK (Gold Album), #27 US, #1 Iceland, #5 Portugal (Gold Album) #18 AUS. It is clear from these high chart positions that Sigur Rós is a band to watch and they must have a considerable following. I was sad when I found out that Sigur Rós did a tour of Australia less than a month before I discovered their music, I doubt they will return for quite a while.

Takk. has been described by previous reviewers as being ambient and beautiful, I whole-heartedly agree with these labels. Even from the first song there is a strong atmosphere present, and for once the feeling stays throughout the WHOLE album and doesn't drop, even for a minute. The instrument chiefly in charge of these atmospheres is the guitar, which is played with a cello bow while the guitar is on maximum reverb. I being a guitar player was eager to try this out so I grabbed my viola bow and tried it out, it's actually harder than it sounds as it is very awkward to play.

There are too many songs to go through and I really can't be bothered describing them all, but I will go through a couple. My personal favourite song is "Saeglopur", the opening of the song consists of twinkling bells and piano which is then joined by Jonsi's high beautiful voice. After this intro, the storm comes in which the music gets very loud, but this is a good type of loud, if you get my meaning. It dies down again and returns to regular ambient music. The second song on "Takk." "Glósóli", has some very admirable features and the first "section" of it is very lush and mellow, this feeling is soon joined by a strange sound, which reminds me of Roman Soldier's studded sandals impacting on their extremely well make roads. There is another very loud section followed by a soft ambient finish.

"Milanó" is basically focused around a piano melody which is repeated many time through the song, "Milanó" is the longest song and it also has the most time changes. It changes from being mellow and ambient to being loud and full of retribution. I wonder what the meaning of the last song on this album means, "Heysátan." Perhaps it means hello Satan or something. This brings me to another point the fact that all the vocals are either sung in Icelandic or made up makes no bad impression on the music. I'd actually go as far as saying that I couldn't imagine "Takk." with lyrics in any other language. The fact that Sigur Rós is Icelandic sort of makes their music more interesting and they would probably be inclined to incorporate traditional Icelandic elements into their music. Fusion between different types of music usually creates some type of interesting hybrid style of music.

I personally love Post-rock and "Takk." is one of the leading albums in the genre. Sigur Rós's style of Post-rock is different to that of say. Godspeed You Black Emperor but both contain the same new in old energy. All Post-rock bands use the old and new to create music and this is what makes the genre is great. I'd say that every one should have a sample of Post-rock, just to try it out and I'd say that "Takk." would be quite high on the list, but the last thing I have to say is that not all Post-rock is the same.

Australian | 3/5 |

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