Perth Concert Hall, Australia. March 4th, 2006

"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed..." - Patrick Bateman, American Psycho (Brett Easton Ellis).

"Curtains are both hiding and revealing. Sometimes it's so beautiful that they're hiding, it gets your imagination going. But in the theatre, when the curtains open, you have this fantastic euphoria, that you're going to see something new, something will be revealed." - David Lynch.

There are a lot of curtains in this world. The semi-lucid curtain that shrouds Icelandic cosmo-rockers Sigur Rós is a bathed in a pale yellow throb. Silhouettes of the band and their machinary are grossly distorted, impossibly drawn out to span the height of this ampitheatre, but still discernible enough to spark an unquenchable voyeuristic urge. The reverberations of the opening Glósóli cause palpatations. From the local press preamblings I have fair cause to expect weeping and fainting in aisles. If you may allow me to get phalocratic, the size of this sound is just leviathan. Insane. There's a common perception of the music of Sigur Rós as some kind of ethereal intangability. All music is tangible, bub. If you can't feel it, you're not getting your money's worth.

For curiosity's sake alone I could consent to witnessing this entire gig with the band hidden; just to know that experience. But after Glósóli the curtain falls to reveal Jón Þór "Jónsi" Birgisson alone, bent like a swan's neck over his guitar, a cello bow for a bill. It's a striking image. The sound it creates is a churning distortion that fills the room by itself, wrenching the heartstrings from their moorings. Far out. Perhaps after listening to this band for six years I thought I'd be prepared to see them. I guess not.

Someone shouts out something indecipherible, presumably a request, although I don't get to hear anyone shout out "play the one that goes oooooaaaeeeaaeeeaaahhh. I wonder if the Cocteau Twins ever had to put up with that. What unfurls however is only Svefn-g-englar, which they no longer play apparently, short of a wishlist. I discovered Sigur Rós at a pretty odd time in my life. Whilst a lot of reviews described them purely in abstract, they seemed to fit with me like a comfy pair of slippers. Subsequently, there's a handful of SR moments that relate to specific personal epochs and the weight of expectation could squash an elephant. Notably Viðrar vel til loftárása, which tonight features a half minute pause, it'd come across contrived if it weren't accented by Jón Bor Birgisson's sudden, sharp, hesitant breaths which threaten to shatter the spell. However, compared to the record the ending is tame, restrained - less of an earthquake. The first seven minutes or so are nothing short of spell-binding and consideration must be given to they nigh on impossibility of creating that orchestra collapsing effect the studio version achieves without equal. Neither does Sæglópur quite live up to the titanic expectations I have for it. Seemingly, despite there being eight musicians onstage the densest parts of their opus are somehow less overwhelming in the flesh. If anything its the songs I've either forgotten or ignored which come to life the freshest. First album minimathon Hafssol is a surprise which gets extra props from Leon ("wickedsticks", I hear him exclaim), as does a drifting Heysatan. If some of the burst-through-the-ceiling moments are a shade underwhelming, it is also a surprise to see how far they are willing to strip themselves down. It shouldn't be a surprise given their background in minimalism and the memory of their almost left behind album Von. There might be some occassional traces of jet lag, although even an average performace by a primary space cadets such as these is still a spectacle.

It's amazing a man reach the high register Jón Bor Birgisson does. It's almost unsettling just to hear it come from this gangly non-earthling singing in a combination of Icelandic and his constructed language "Hopelandic"; stroking his guitar with a cello bow, entirely possessed by that sound - its enough to tear the room in half by itself; an intense inner-lurching that vibrates through every sinew. Whilst it's puzzling that more bands haven't tried this, it's perhaps possible no one will ever do it as brutally as this. At this point I start to experience frequent, eyes-open hallucinations. It gets to the point where when something 'normal' happens, ie someone wakls across the stage, I can't be sure whether its really happening. I feel completely disorientated. Songs I should recognise are slipping away.

The closing Untitled (No. 8 AKA Popplagio), another song I'd let drift by the wayside, is the best yet. An unstoppable calamity, a sound so large it could destroy us all. The screen descends once again. It's a simple idea but so overpoweringly effective, as the blood red light burns through.

The applause is longer than warfare.

When I started composing my gigging experiences into some kind of permanent documentation it was mainly as a challenge. I've mentioned before the Steve Martin quote that "talking about music is like dancing about architecture". It's an inadaquette, inappropriate medium. It fails to capture that unique spark at the heart of music which can only be expressed through music. Nevertheless, this is our testimony.

This am:X-C and your very welcome to it.

As experienced by Christopher James

Support: Amina.
Four elegantly dressed, svelte Icelanders who turn out to be SR's string section deftly swish over a fantasically diverse range of instruments, percussion, plinky things, strings and all sorts. It's almost entirely instrumental and all very post-Mum (that's the Icelandic noodle-niks Mum, pronounced Moom), and could by some means soundtrack some Scandanavian animation where an Icey Juddermann could frolic in the snow and scare the local children. But despite my cynical tendancy to compare them to bands who might've trodden a similar pathway, I become, ever so gradually, drawn in. And so seems the consensus, as I hear fragments of "I thought that was good" and probably most gratifyingly for the band, "I'm going to buy their record". Enticing.

External link: The splendiferous wisedom of David Lynch. Whilst its tempting to describe it as skewed or just outright weird, it's no less valid than any de rigueur assumptions about life, the universe and everything. And curtains.