Yesterday, after having succeeded in sleeping half an hour during the whole night I decided not to go to work. I went to see my doctor who told me I had a very low blood pressure, gave me pills and ordered me to rest. It was 10 in the morning and I didn't feel sleepy at all, no matter how tired I was. I looked for an apartment, took appointments and finally, cleaned my room. I don't do it very often. I do it when a new boyfriend visits, or when he dumps me and I feel that I need to wipe his smell out of the room. The bastard put perfume on my cds before giving them back to me.     

Agaetis Byrjun is great. The band may think it's over-produced but I think it works fine as a studio album. They wanted ( ) to sound bare and less arranged and more live-sounding. Sigur Rós are an incredible live band. Listen to any bootleg and the truth will just hit you in the face. But unlike the band's live performances ( ) sounds cold, empty and heartless. I had heard live versions of all the songs in ( ) and even if the songs were still there, with their external beauty, the emotion was gone. I think ( ) can only be considered as a good reminder of how great the band is live. I don't know how people who have never seen the band live react when they listen to ( ). Tell me how you feel.

Here's a single. It's a 3" black cd (like those playstation cds) with a word-free packaging. The cover art is taken from the song's video (which is nice actually, even though a little demagogic) and we can find the little blind/sleepwalking dude in the back. The song was called Vaka before and now it's called Untitled 1 (mainly because the label needed a name). The song is good, i like it but what i said above works for it anyway. The b side is quite interesting. The band has re-created the song the Trent Reznor way, deconstructing and reconstructing it. As a result it sounds, well, great. It's eleven minutes long, split into three parts (tracks 2, 3 and 4) and the result cannot really be compared to the original. It's longer and less song-like. It's more than a remix, they took bits and pieces of the song, remixed them, re-arranged them, and added a few parts here and there. I like it. Part one sounds like Sigur Ros, part two sounds a little weirder -a transition between the first and third parts, and part three sounds like Stars of the Lid -endless keyboards drones forever.

-Barbara H

/may 15th 2003/