Album: Sigur Ros

BA BA TI KI DI DO, EMI

It doesn't tell you anywhere on the typically subtle packaging, but the three tracks that make up this sublime, 20-minute EP are called "BA BA", "TI KI" and "DI DO" - which is, I suppose, a concession of sorts following their last full-length release, which lacked both album and track titles. This time, words have been dispensed with in favour of dance moves, the project having been written for the 50th gala performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The first part is an elegant chandelier of delicate glockenspiel figures, tinted with sunrise keyboard tones; the second employs the fragile tinkle of music boxes, interlaced with a bricolage of ticking and scratching noises that provide a quiet percussive bed until, after five minutes, a piano figure imposes a firmer motif on proceedings. In the final section, the music box plays more desultorily beneath an ambient shroud of subdued wind noise, with muffled vocal parts and the sound of the dancers' feet (including Cunningham's own tap-dancing) gr

It doesn't tell you anywhere on the typically subtle packaging, but the three tracks that make up this sublime, 20-minute EP are called "BA BA", "TI KI" and "DI DO" - which is, I suppose, a concession of sorts following their last full-length release, which lacked both album and track titles. This time, words have been dispensed with in favour of dance moves, the project having been written for the 50th gala performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The first part is an elegant chandelier of delicate glockenspiel figures, tinted with sunrise keyboard tones; the second employs the fragile tinkle of music boxes, interlaced with a bricolage of ticking and scratching noises that provide a quiet percussive bed until, after five minutes, a piano figure imposes a firmer motif on proceedings. In the final section, the music box plays more desultorily beneath an ambient shroud of subdued wind noise, with muffled vocal parts and the sound of the dancers' feet (including Cunningham's own tap-dancing) gradually furnishing a decisive rhythm, before squalls of distortion slash across the piece. Achingly beautiful throughout, BA BA TI KI DI DO is a compelling and unorthodox first offering from Sigur Ros's new deal with EMI.