Sigur Rós – Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do (2004)

This EP is not necessarily known to even that many people who consider themselves Sigur Rós fans, let alone other people. I remember when a friend of mine bought this EP when it was brand new and we listened to it quite a lot at the time. Back then I felt like this was a bit too obscure and the price was quite high for a CD that only had three songs on it. Later on I kind of regretted my decision not to buy it, because I started to like the amazing ambient sounds of the EP, but couldn't find it anywhere. This EP has been out of print for a long time. Fortunately, a couple of years ago, I found it second hand in a record store in London, so now I'm a happy owner of this great EP. This EP is mainly instrumental and there are only a couple of small moments when you can hear human voices, but even they are quite obscure.



This album is way more in the ambient genre than the other Sigur Rós albums that also have huge post-rock guitar walls. This album has lots of plinky metallic sounds and experimental scratching sounds and in many places there's not much of a melodic structure to the songs. I guess if I had to compare this album to any other artist, it would have to be Brian Eno with his strange ambient recordings.

Ba Ba sounds like a start of a massive song with melody twirling ominously towards a climax that never really comes. There are dramatic pianos and plinky glockenspiels in the song and at any moment, you might expect the songs to explode in full force, but only thing you get on top of that is some scratching and some smooth synth sounds. This song continues straight on to Ti Ki, which is all about experimental plinky sounds and electronic beeps and clanks. Towards the end you get some bigger synth sounds that are more familiar to Sigur Rós fans. Di Do is a song in its own right, even if it too has similar plinky sounds. There are lots of crazy sounds, both human and non-human, such as car doors slammed and fishing reels being reeled. Towards the end of the song, the sounds rise quite loud with intertwining sounds from throughout the album along with screeching electronic sounds.

Unfortunately, there are no music videos for this EP. Normally, Sigur Rós' music videos are quite amazing. One great peculiarity of this album, however, is that you can basically play all the three songs on different equipment at the same time and they all seem to fit together creating a psychedelic harmony.

I really like the concept of this EP. Usually bands can't experiment too much on their albums, because there's a risk that fans will lose interest if they end up buying an album they don't like that much. With EPs it's different, because only the more hardcore fans usually buy those and even on Spotify, regular users stick with the album material and singles.

Listen to the EP on Spotify.