With perhaps typical Icelandic perversity, Sigur Ros kick off their new major label deal with EMI with perhaps the most esoteric release of a pretty wilful career. Written for octogenarian US choreographer Merce Cunningham Dance Company's 50th gala performance, 'BA BA TI KI DI DO' is 20-minutes of instrumental music based around music-box piano lines, percussive sounds derived from ballet shoes and the fractured syllables and tap dancing feet of Merce Cunningham himself.
The whole sounds something akin to the Exorcist score married to Byrne/Eno's 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts'. First performed alongside Radiohead's similarly commissioned piece at Brooklyn Academy of Music last October, 'BA BA TI KI DI DO' forms part of the Cunningham Dance Company's Split Sides programme, wherein the elements of choreography, music, set design, costume and lighting are chosen randomly on the night by the throw of the dice.
In this way the collision of dance and music are entirely open to chance as part of a 32-way probability factor, and any sychronisation is - theoretically at least - entirely coincidental. In practise, the members of Sigur Ros stand in the orchestra pit watching the dancers like hawks and adjusting their playing rhythm and style according to activity on stage - often to exhilarating effect.
The music on this EP is a performance of 'BA BA TI KI DI DO' recorded at the band's Icelandic studio in late Nov 2003, after the initial run of BAM performances of Split Sides and in light of the experience derived therefrom. Split Sides has subsequently been performed at Merce Cunningham runs in both Paris and Seoul, Korea, and is expected to form part of the company's programme for their shows at London's Barbican later in the year.
'BA BA TI KI DI DO' contains three separate tracks, respectively 'BA BA', 'TI KI' and, yes, 'DI DO'. In the spirit of the commission, these were initially written to be played in any order, but, having lived with them, the band like it best when they occur in the sequence presented here.
Founded on field recordings of the dancers feet recorded at their rehearsal space in Manhattan, the live elements of 'BA BA TI KI DI DO' are played on two sheet-fed music boxes (£25 each from a nice little place in Bristol), a glockenspiel bowed with a cello bow and a homemade percussive doo-dah called a "bommsett", which comprises eight ballet shoes on a rack which are poked, prodded and struck to extract various noises.
'BA BA TI KI DI DO' was first made available in America via the Apple I-Tunes store, where it spent 2 weeks atop the download chart. The artwork incorporates elements of Robert Heishman's set design for Split Sides, as well as Merce' s stick-figure notations for choreography. It comes as a special digipack CD and one-sided 12-inch which also features an etching from Merce Cunningham on the flip. T'is a thing of beauty.
Sigur Ros will perform 'BA BA TI KI DI DO' as part of the Cunningham Dance Company performance in Bergen, Norway on May 21. Thereafter the band will be back in Iceland continuing work on their fourth album, due for release in the New Year.
On other side matters, Sigur Ros have completed the soundtrack for a Scottish animation short entitled Loch Ness Kelpie. They are also collaborating with video artist Doug Aitken for a gallery installation in Paris later in the Summer. Keyboard player/guitarist Kjartan Sveinsson, meanwhile, has finished another soundtrack to a 20-minute Icelandic short entitled Sidasti I Barinn set for Icelandic release in the Autumn (and also recently performed "country/complaint rock" version of four Sigur Ros songs under the moniker Lonesome Traveller). Singer Jon Thor Birgisson, meantime, will be performing a choir piece with Kristin Bjork of Kitchen Motors in Reykjavik at the end of April. Phew!
- Written by EMI records
