Known primarily for his haunting falsetto and other-worldly presence as the singer in
Sigur Rós, Jon Thor Birgisson has - together with his partner Alex Somers - been exhibit-
ing artwork and staging exhibitions under the name Riceboy Sleeps for two or three years
now, including the release of a limited edition picture book.  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.
Riceboy Sleeps is human in a profound and verging-on spiritual way. It says nothing, liter-
ally, and yet living through its 68-minutes you emerge feeling much has been revealed. 
Its slowly evolving abstract landscapes are both edifying and life-affirming. The record
works as a whole, and exists in a contemplative dream-state, unconstrained and mesmeric,
seemingly outside time.
The record, however, is more active than its apparent antecedents in the ambient output of
Brian Eno, and other deliberately low-impact works. Riceboy Sleeps is awash with both
tension and stimuli, as well as being frequently, and stunningly, beautiful.
Played solely on acoustic instruments in Iceland (and featuring long-time string col-
laborators 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.