Dean DeBlois’ doc­u­men­tary film Heima (mean­ing “com­ing home” or “at home”) fol­lows the band Sigur Rós on their sum­mer 2006 tour of their home coun­try Ice­land. The tour con­sisted of mostly free, unan­nounced con­certs, and with the band in three basic con­fig­u­ra­tions span­ning the con­tin­uüm of the purely acoustic to the fully elec­tric. The four core mem­bers Jón Þór “Jónsi” Bir­gis­son, Georg “Goggi” Hólm, Kjar­tan “Kjarri” Sveins­son, and Orri Páll Dýra­son per­form sev­eral acoustic songs just for the cam­era. The extended band (includ­ing string ensem­ble Ami­ina) is also seen per­form­ing out­doors, fully unplugged, at a con­cert protest­ing an envi­ron­men­tally destruc­tive dam to be built by the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment. Finally, in con­trast, we also see the full band in indoor con­certs with dra­matic light­ing and video effects.

Sigur Rós live in concert

Most Sigur Rós songs are sung in an invented lan­guage called Von­len­ska (“Hopelandic”), adding to the uni­ver­sal­ity and inter­na­tional appeal of their music. For the unini­ti­ated, Sigur Rós are a key rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the musi­cal genre “post-rock,” which gen­er­ally refers to highly evoca­tive, cin­e­matic, largely instru­men­tal music some­times com­pared to movie sound­track com­po­si­tion. Other notable bands work­ing in roughly the same idiom include Mog­wai, Explo­sions in the Sky, and Múm. In this Dork Reporter’s opin­ion, you can trace the genre’s her­itage back to the pro­gres­sive rock of Yes and King Crimson.

Sigur Rós live in concert

Inter­view clips and stun­ning land­scape images punc­tu­ate the film, mak­ing it almost as much about Ice­land itself as the band. The most incon­gru­ous clip is from the avant-garde band’s unlikely appear­ance on the Late Late Show with Craig Kil­born. They dis­cuss being unpre­pared for the busi­ness side of a career in music (lawyers, con­tracts, etc.), but under­stand that they have to think of the future.

The sec­ond disc of the two DVD set fea­tures full unin­ter­rupted per­for­mances, but with no two songs played in sequence, let alone a full con­cert. The frag­men­ta­tion of both the main doc­u­men­tary film and the sup­ple­men­tary fea­tures is mildly dis­ap­point­ing. How­ever, as reported in Pitch­fork, the band has plans for a full con­cert film directed by Vin­cent Morisset.

Offi­cial movie sites: www.heima.co.uk and www.heimafilm.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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