I left work shortly after eight tonight. Not in the best of moods. I had been meant to go and see a friend’s band play and they were due on stage at eight, the other side of town. But there were issues in work which just had to be resolved today full stop. So I stayed and they were, I hope resolved.
A few minutes later I was walking down the street heading towards the bus station pretty much grinning like a loon. Let’s rewind a little and start at the start.
This morning, we had an ‘All Hands’ in work. Quite simply an off-site talking to for everyone in the company. So headed straight to that. It was ok, some of it was quite interesting, some of it was boring and some of it was well fucking impressive. Anyway after that was over we all walked back to the office. It was about 20 minutes away. Got there around 12:30 and unlocked my machine. The transfer I had started of the Sigur Ros gig was still going. About two minutes later it finished. It may have taken close on 20 hours, but I had 1.1 GB of pure uncompressed, close to soundboard quality wavs sitting on my hard drive. Later that afternoon I had a double cd set of the gig ready to go.
I walked out the front door at work and I pressed play. As the first track begins (and we are talking close on a four minute lead in here), it just hit me. Completely. I actually shivered with anticipation. As I typed that, I got ‘shivere’ typed out, then the vocals being on viðrar vel til loftárása and I stopped. It wasn’t that I stopped, I couldn’t type any more. My eyelids came down and there was only the music. Anyways so I’m walking down the street and let me tell you this, there is almost nothing that matches the high music can give you. Drink doesn’t even qualify and drugs don’t even come close.
Listening back I noticed something which I was, I am sure doing myself at the time. Your out at a gig and a song ends. You clap, you cheer etc etc. You just do, sometimes just because it’s polite. It’s so very different listening to this. Normally there will be clapping and cheering even before the song ends, you know it’s coming to and end and you show your appreciation. Not at this gig. The songs don’t end, they either go out in a blaze of glory like you wouldn’t believe or they wind down and fade out. The songs that fade out, you hear every single last note. There is silence, people are barely breathing and then the song stops. The last note is drawn out and let go. The breathing stops. There is a moment, just a moment but a moment of complete silence. It says everything you need to know about the performance just seen. The audience is breathless and then with no build-up at all, no lone person starting everyone off, there is clapping and cheering.
Another thing I note. Jónsi Birgisson vocals are simply stunning. I don’t have the words to do them justice. When you can barely hear them over the music and the drums are going strong and loud, there is not a single more powerful sound. They come through above everything else and cannot help but reach into you.
There was a note with the downloaded files asking that no-one re-encode them to MP3 or anything like that so as to keep the high quality. Initially I scoffed at this and intended to convert them to MP3. Now, there is no chance in hell of that happening. I don’t want to loose a single piece of the quality. I have to send some packages to people (no really I do) and I might just have to include copies of these cds in there.
I’d like to throw about a big thank you and major kudos to eighteen seconds before sunrise.