Takk...

Most bands just play their instruments. There are a few bands out there, though, who when placed in a room cannot be said to be playing their instruments so much as they are playing that entire room, and everything in it. Every molecule of air, every flat surface or stationary object that can vibrate to the frequency of the music that their conventional instruments are producing, even any people in the room that happen to be listening; all are incorporated and absorbed into a larger whole that becomes the new, expanded definition of what is being played. Even at their quietest moments, they're not so much doing less musically as they are working more with space than with their instruments.

Sigur Ros are a great example of this type of band. They've always had the ability to take over an entire room and sublimate it to their will, and they demonstrate this ability with unprecedented skill on their newest album, "Takk". On previous Sigur Ros albums, although they had their loud, climactic moments, they tended to explore the quieter end of the spectrum. "Takk" indicates a desire to take things in a different direction, to spend longer on the swells and crescendoes and see what can be achieved by focusing on them more than on the buildup to them. After the title track's ambient instrumental hum, which serves as an introduction to the album (if not a theme), "Glosoli" begins quietly. However, pushed into action by martial drums and a throbbing, insistent bassline, Jonsi Birgisson's guitar grows louder and louder and finally kicks on the distortion. By now, the rhythm section is pounding furiously, and the entire band continues to escalate, reaching volume levels that Sigur Ros have never before attained. The song dissolves in an explosion of distortion, and the quiet keyboards that slide in underneath the fallout lead into "Hoppipolla". This song begins quietly as well, only instead of turning into a wall of distortion, it features a classical string section whose escalation into melodic grandeur is a whole different kind of loud.

The best example of the sort of sound domination Sigur Ros are working with here is the album's centerpiece, "Seaglopur". This song expands on the escalation into distortion that "Glosoli" was based on, but instead of merely building tension until it finally explodes, "Seaglopur" is based around a melodic chord progression that is rooted by the keyboards and offset harmonically by Birgisson's falsetto vocals. This chord progression is occasionally offset by a similar one, which might even be called a chorus, were we dealing with a more conventional pop-based musical group. After a short run through this chord progression at a very low volume, with almost no participation from the rhythm section, guitar distortion is brought into the mix and the rhythm section joins in. Immediately, the volume has been raised significantly, but rather than just run through things at this pitch once and drop back into a more quiet pattern, as has been Sigur Ros's standard operating procedure in the past, they just get louder and louder, running through the main progressions of the song several times. It seems like it should be a crescendo, but it arrives too early and lasts too long, instead becoming more like a continuous plateau. Birgisson's guitar is usually played with a bow, and close listening detects what seem to be multiple tracks of bowed and extremely distorted guitar, creating an almost symphonic effect that most resembles the paradoxically choral sound My Bloody Valentine famously created out of layer upon layer of distortion on their album "Loveless". The ethereal keyboards of the earlier, quieter portions of the song are still floating around as well, but the keyboard player is also now playing the root chords of the song in a low octave, harmonizing nicely with the pounding bass. The real melody of the song, by the time it's been going for a while, are carried entirely by the vocals. The rest of the band is rocking out so hard that you can imagine them jumping around on stage like they're in Superchunk or something. Of course, it is still a Sigur Ros song, and we're reminded of this when, at the height of the distorted pounding, everything drops out except for the piano, the vocals, and the choral-sounding guitars, which are joined by an actual string section for the last minute of the song. Nonetheless, unlike detours into louder sections on previous albums, such as "Agaetis Byrjun"'s "NY Batteri" or "Svefn-G-Englar", on which the loud sections were short and isolated from the rest of the song, "Seaglopur" has plunged fully into the possibilities of loudness. In doing so, it takes Sigur Ros in a direction they've never been before, and locates new and exciting possibilities for their sound.