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| Hvarf/Heim | 
 enlarge | Artist: Sigur Ros
Label: Xl Recordings
Category: Music
List Price: $15.98
Buy New: $10.74
You Save: $5.24 (33%)
New (45) Used (14) from $10.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 6099
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
MPN: 40307
UPC: 634904030728
EAN: 0634904030728
ASIN: B000W1USNG
Release Date: November 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New and Factory Sealed Item Fast Shipping
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | Salka | | • | Hljomalind | | • | I Gaer | | • | Von | | • | Hafsol |
Disc 2
| • | Samskeyti | | • | Staralfur | | • | Vaka | | • | Agaetis Byrjun | | • | Heysatan | | • | Von |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
In Icelandic, the word "hvarf" means "disappeared," and the first five tracks of Sigur Ros's double CD set nearly did disappear, having remained unreleased until this collection. Fans will love new opportunities to enjoy the band's precious style--precious save for "I Gaer," which starts out like a music-box and builds to dramatic, Pink Floyd-esque guitar-rawk proportions. The inclusion of two specific tracks, "Von" (meaning "hope") and "Hafsol," will especially delight longtime SR fans; written and recorded during the group's infancy in 1995, these tracks became treasured live performances, having never been captured on disc as their expanded, evolved versions until now. The disc's second portion, "Heim" ("home") is a six-song acoustic set that shows Sigur Ros in a less grandiose, more delicate light. The original versions of each were spread throughout SR's four previous releases, and all six were captured live-to-disc when the band performed a unique tour comprising surprise concerts in settings ranging from deserted fish factories to darkened caves. (The tour has been released separately as an endearing DVD, a companion to this collection entitled Heima.) While totally acoustic, the songs remain full-bodied, lush and lovely, especially the former underground hit "Agaetis byrjun" and "Heysatan," within which you'll hear--if you listen closely--the sounds of chirping birds singing along with the orchestral instruments. --Denise Sheppard More from Sigur Ros 
Takk | 
( ) | 
Von | 
Screaming Masterpiece | 
Sigur Ros (Ny Batteri) |
Album Description
November 5 sees Sigur Ros release a 2 CD set featuring all-new recordings titled "Hvarf - Heim". The album has two titles because it is in effect two separate, but complementary, entities with two front covers and is issued as a limited edition run of two discs. Open it one way and it's "Hvarf" ("disappeared" or "haven") a five track electric studio record comprising mainly unreleased rarities from Sigur Ros's back-pages, none of which features on "Heima" (the double DVD release issued on the same day). It features three previously unreleased songs (Salka, Hljomalind and I Gaer) alongside radical re-workings of two tracks from their debut album "Von". Open it the other way and it's "Heim" ("home"), a six track live acoustic record, comprising delicate new unplugged versions of some of Sigur Ros's finest moments, which have never been performed in this way before. The band were originally planning to release a more traditional live album to go with the "Heima" tour film, but instead decided upon "Hvarf-Heim" - infinitely more stimulating and exciting than some "will-this-do?" toss-offs of songs they honed to perfection in the studio aeons ago. Hljomalind / Staralfur is released as a limited edition double A-side 7" vinyl single on October 22 as a taster for the album release, but also to celebrate the UK Premiere of the "Heima" film which is on October 24 as part of the BBC's Electric Proms.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Hvarf/Heim November 16, 2007
54 out of 67 found this review helpful
NPR's Bryant Park Project called their Oct. 5, 2007 interview with Sigur Ros "possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media." Interviewer Luke Burbank lobbed the musicians unanswerable questions like "Did you think you would be the kind of band that sold two million records?" to which they would look at each other and eventually mumble a thinly veiled kiss-off. It was painful. But perhaps the band simply has as difficult a time talking about their music as we do. When so many of us listen to Sigur Ros, we try to describe it in terms of how it makes us feel, reaching higher and higher for adjectives that might explain its emotional power, but we can't do it. Sigur Ros is a spiritual experience at best--an angel laying its hands on you and flying you above the clouds toward an exalted place.
But if Sigur Ros has a weakness--and it's a significant one--it's that they've been providing this experience for us over and over again since 1999's Agaetis Byrjun. No other band sounded like them and few were as gorgeous, which legitimized their stagnation for nearly a decade. Hvarf/Heim marks the first time that this weakness seriously detracts from enjoying the music, despite how pretty it can be. It's a lovingly packaged album, full of regal melodies, stretched choirboy chants, sweeping orchestration and the occasional uplifting crescendo, like everything else in their oeuvre.
Granted, Hvarf/Heim isn't the ideal place for Sigur Ros to experiment. Not quite a proper album, this double-disc is part new material, part reinterpretations and part live recordings. Hvarf ("disappear") is the superior disc, offering three new songs ("Salka," "Hliomalind" and "I Gaer") and epic re-workings of "Von" and "Hafsol" from their 1997 debut, Von. The mention of new Sigur Ros songs should get any fan worked up, but the problems begin with "Salka," which contains a vocal passage ripped from the buildup of Takk's blistering opener, "Glosoli." As someone who listened to "Glosoli" religiously when it first came out, I couldn't help but feel cheated, though at this point in the band's career, they're only cheating themselves. It turns out that the rest of "Salka" plays out like an inverted version of "Glosoli," treading a similar structural path in the same key, but wimping out whenever it threatens to burst.
So, properly speaking, Hvarf contains two new songs. The winner is "Hliomalind," a lush rocker that feels perfect at just under five minutes. It's also the only song here that hints at the band's growth, moving closer to the majestic ebbs and flows of shoegaze than anything they've put to tape. The loser is "I Gaer," which trudges wearily through some guitar and cello-begotten sturm-und-drang before petering out. "Von" and "Hafsol" trump their poorly recorded originals and should give diehard fans something to celebrate. Both are on the long side at ten minutes each, but they reward patient listening if you're willing to forget that they could have appeared on Agaetis Byrjun, Takk, or ( ) and no one would have noticed.
Heim ("home") gathers six live tracks from the group's 2006 Icelandic tour, in which they played in various natural locations: green fields, caverns, fjords, and so on. Sigur Ros' music lends itself to Iceland's towering beauty, and they know it: They're releasing a tour DVD, called Heima, later this November. Those who have seen Heima claim it's spectacular, but without the visuals, Heim sounds like it was recorded in a spotless studio. These tracks are all acoustic (duh, how do you plug a guitar into a fjord?), which make them both amazingly boring and extremely enlightening, as Sigur Ros has never sounded this naked. Too often, however, these versions deviate little from their originals structurally, and the up-front pianos and vocals demonstrate that the songs themselves don't carry much weight--a problem that befalls many acoustic sets.
The question of "value" often comes up with inessential releases, and how much Hvarf/Heim is worth probably depends on who you are. Loyal Sigur Ros followers may actually value it the least; for them, that eerie feeling of deja vu won't be worth its ludicrous $16 sticker price. On the other hand, new and casual listeners may find the record beautiful, dazzling, and moving, but that's also part of the problem: With Hvarf/Heim, Sigur Ros have entered the realm of mere words for perhaps the first time since Von, and the adjectives we'll use to describe it won't be quite so sublime anymore.
Misleading Description November 6, 2007
16 out of 23 found this review helpful
I love Sigur Ros and have all their records. I was looking forward to this release and pre-ordered it when it was available on Amazon. I was excited to learn that it was a double album and was hoping to hear some new material. Unfortunately, this is not the case. It is 2 CD's but only about 70 minutes of music. First CD contains early work (5 songs) and second CD contains 6 live tracks. I think $13.97 is kind of pricey for 11 songs of previously available material. It would have been nice if Amazon provided more of a description, i.e. tracklisting, etc. I can currently listen to the full EP on Rhapsody. Once again, this is a 2 Disc EP and not a full lenth LP. Hopefully, the accompaning 2 disc DVD is a better value.
 Icy White Noise : The Return of the Inuits November 6, 2007
15 out of 20 found this review helpful
First of all, Hvarf/Heim is not so much a follow-up as a detour. It offers 70 minutes of music spread over two CDs: the first featuring rerecordings of tracks from their 1994 debut album Von, plus outtakes, the second acoustic versions of better-known songs.
From "The Guardian" : "Despite its tangential nature, the first CD encapsulates both what's admirable and what's off-putting about Sigur Ros' music. There's Salka, which shows off both their way with a winding guitar melody and enviable capacity to sound simultaneously wistful and triumphant. Hafsol, meanwhile, demonstrates the band's ability to alight on a sound that's unfathomably appealing: in this case a drumstick being rattled against bass guitar strings, a noise that, improbably enough, turns out to have the same warm, comforting quality as the smell of freshly brewed coffee. But in the debit column, there is I Gaer, which wobbles unsteadily along the line that separates winning grandiosity from hollow bombast, and the creeping feeling that for all their admirable sonic experimentation, there's often something slightly formulaic about the results.
For every moment you're carried along by a song's sweeping loveliness, there's an equivalent moment where you find yourself wondering if their sound isn't a little uniform for its own good: everything proceeds at the same pace, the vocals always wail, enveloped in reverb, you're never that far from a dramatic surge in volume or a string-augmented climax.
It's a feeling that the second disc does little to dispel. The tracks all seem to have been taped in deserted community halls in rural Iceland, or outdoors by fjords and waterfalls, but they're not quite as atmospheric as their intriguing recording locations suggest.
Indeed, most of the time, the acoustic versions don't actually sound that different to the originals. Agaetis Byrjun and the instrumental Samskeyti take on a marginally tweedier quality with their guitar effects replaced by a harmonium. The version of Von is a little less cavernous than its incarnation on CD1.
On Vaka, the experiment yields real dividends - with the echo stripped away, Birgisson's vocals take on an unexpected visceral intensity - but the rest sounds homogenous: like beautiful background music."
However, this is not a bad thing. As a double CD, this is perhaps the least accessible of the entire Sigur Ros catalog, simply because of the nature of the material. You can't really call this a 'proper' studio album. One thing is clear though - if you're into atmosphere, and if you own a really snappy sound system, this is the kind of album you should be buying.
Personally, albums such as this work for me because I have a personal relationship with my music over my headphones, and occassionally venture to play them on my music system as well. "Hvarf/Heim" sounds totally different on both my Ipod, and on my music system (I have the latest Philips home theater). I can't explain it. So if youre planning on buying the CD to rip it to your Ipod, or if you plan to just download the audio files, you're missing the big picture. This is big, sweeping mood music that should envelop a room.
Five Stars. Iceland has never sounded more inviting.
Ear Delicious November 10, 2007
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
Sonic awesomeness!Keep in mind folks, this is some of the music from the film Heima, a RETROSPECTIVE you knuckleheads. A couple new tunes. I think the 'electric' is better than the acoustic and I find I Gaer just incredible. I really don't understand the critique that the song is bombastic. It is soaring. Also remember, this band makes music THEY love. They don't make music for us. If we like it, great. If not, great.
Having been to Iceland, the music just fits the country. If you have not been, plan a trip sometime. Incredibly gorgeous but bring lots of money!!!
My favorite song is Hafsol. Bring tears to my eyes every time.
Enjoy! (or not :))
 Shoulda been an EP November 10, 2007
13 out of 17 found this review helpful
Not much new here for fans. Sigur Ros is one of my favorite bands, but let's be honest, they're not one to reinvent their songs. Their concerts are amazing but offer little in the way of surprise, and Disc 2 of this collection is no different...there's hardly any noteworthy difference between these songs and the original album versions. I was expecting concert recordings, but once I realized that wasn't the case, I began to hope they'd used past works as a platform to create something new. Instead, they've just re-recorded those songs live. And with "Hafsol" (concert favorite and the best song in this collection) having already been released elsewhere, there's very little here worth paying for, at least for those of us who have the other albums. If I'd known, I would have bought the first four tracks of Disc 1 on (that music download site) rather than buying this whole set.
By the way, the Heima DVD is wonderful. Fans of the band should buy it instead of this CD, to get far more bang for your buck.
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