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Last week, Sigur Rós put out an enigmatic trailer titled INNI without any details.  Speculation of a live film was an easy guess… “Inni” is the shorthand name for the second track (“Inní mér syngur vitleysingur” aka “within me a lunatic sings“) on their last full-length album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust.  Today they released the initial details about the upcoming release…

Inni is comprised of a double live album and seventy-five minute film of Sigur Rós’ last show before their well-documented “indefinite hiatus” at the end of 2008.

Recorded and shot over two nights at London’s Alexandra Palace at the close of the world tour around their fifth full length album, með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, Inni sees the band at the peak of their powers, captured on film for the first time as a core four-piece since they were joined by string section amiina at the start of the century. Directed by Vincent Morisset (Arcade Fire’s Miroir Noir), the film is set to debut at this year’s Venice Film Festival on September 3rd, 2011.

THE FILM

Inni is Sigur Rós’ second live film following 2007’s hugely-celebrated tour documentary Heima. Whereas that film positioned the enigmatic group in the context of their Icelandic homeland, providing geographical, social and historical perspectives on their otherworldly music, Inni focuses purely on the band’s performance, and stands as a stark counterpoint to Heima’s kaleidoscopic richness. Where Heima was lush and colorfully expansive, Inni is spare and near-monochromatic in its tunnel vision. Filmed in a manner that invites both intimacy and claustrophobia, Inni cocoons the viewer in a one-on-one relationship with the band, eschewing the audience for closeness, depicting how it feels for both band and fan to experience Sigur Rós live.

The film’s elegance and atmosphere are enhanced by Morisset’s re-filming of the original digital footage on 16mm, which was then re-filmed again, sometimes through prisms and other found objects, allowing Inni to look and feel like something recovered from the past. Interspersed with this is archival footage drawn from the band’s previous decade, dating back as far as 1998. This juxtaposition gives viewers the full scope of Sigur Rós’ origins, evolution, originality and influence.

THE DOUBLE LIVE ALBUM

The live album Inni – a first for the band – is comprised of the full set from Alexandra Palace, played in order with just one omission, and clocks in at one-and-three-quarter hours. Recorded by Sigur Rós’ in-house studio engineer Birgir Jón Birgisson, Inni’s live audio recording is far and away the best way of replicating the full-force effect of standing in front of one of the world’s most extraordinary bands for an evening.

When taken in together, Inni’s film and live album give us an incredible account of one of the most celebrated and influential rock bands of recent years, showing where they’ve come from, where they’ve been, and like all things Sigur Rós, where it is they will be going next.  More details of how, when and where Inni will enter the world will be made available shortly on sigur-ros.co.uk.

~Dan – np: Sunny Day Real Estate – How It Feels To Be Something On