Riceboy Sleeps

Known primarily for his haunting falsetto and other-worldly presence as the singer in Sigur Rós, Jon Thor (Jónsi) Birgisson has - together with his partner Alex Somers - been exhibiting artwork and staging exhibitions under the name Riceboy Sleeps for two or three years now.

A couple of months back the early fruits of the musical side of this collaboration surfaced in physical form for the first time, with the track "Happiness", on the exemplary 'Dark Was The Night' Red Hot compilation.

Played solely on acoustic instruments in Iceland (and featuring long-time string collaborators Amiina, as well as the Kopavogsdaetur choir) and then endlessly toyed with on solar-powered laptops in a raw food commune in some far corner of Hawaii, 'Riceboy Sleeps' has a suitably, uh, "organic feel" to it; the wave-like lapping of its tidal flow buried beneath analogue hiss, crackle, pulse and distortion; the creaking of rigging and sometime indeterminate falling delicately over; and, on "Howl", ruminative animal chirrups, grunts, snorts and purrs.