VON

It would take a prophet to predict Sigur Ros' illustrious future from Von. Sigur Ros deal much more with an electronic sound than anywhere else in their career. The tremendous atmospheres and full, lush, layers of sound that they built their latter career on make only brief appearances here. The instrumentation is cut down, and this can be heard in the tracks which sometimes sound a bit empty. Von is more an experiment in minimalism and some avant-garde noise aspect than post-rock.

Even Jonsi's voice which should be immediately recognizable to any Sigur Ros listener comes off very different here. At times it almost sounds human and really lacks the rich, angelic quality that I'm used to. It's also featured much less in the songs than one would expect which may be a good thing given its lack of quality here.

This break of character could provide for a really interesting album, but the quality necessary just isn't there. A good portion of the songs are a bit monotonous and repetitive. There's certainly good moments, even good songs ("Dögun" and "Von" standout), but it's definitely less than you've come to expect and not what you've come to expect from Sigur Ros.