Pitchfork has announced that they’re going to be live streaming — via both their homepage and Facebook Live — a very enticing Sigur Rós concert this Friday, April 14. The band will be performing with the L.A. Philharmonic, in the orchestra’s permanent home at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles; they’ll be playing new arrangements of Sigur Rós tracks from guest artists Nico Muhly, Dan Deacon, Owen Palett, Anna Meredith, and more. (The L.A. Phil currently seems to be on a collaborative roll with transcendently-voiced Icelandic musicians: they’re also hosting the West Coast premiere of Björk Digital — the VR experience of her 2015 album Vulnicura — from May 19 to June 4.)
The first half of the concert (a 50-minute set) will feature the above-mentioned performers, while the second, lasting another 50-minutes, will see the band performing on their own. In a statement to Pitchfork, the band mentioned how this is the first time they’ll have played with an orchestra in 15 years — and that they’ll only have the chance to rehearse with the orchestra once beforehand — so, however it turns out, it’ll be “exciting.”
“We thought it would be good to let anyone who couldn’t get tickets and people around the world have the opportunity to see how all it comes together,” they said.
Live streaming may be slightly more desirable for West Coasters, as it’ll begin at regular concert hour for them (at 8:30 p.m.) while in Eastern time it won’t start until 11:30 p.m. That said, orchestrally arranged Sigur Rós sounds like a pretty perfect thing to fall asleep to.
Watch Sigur Rós perform “Gobbledigook” (with Björk banging a drum):
According to their website, the band are currently working on their eighth studio album — and will be performing tracks off of it along their world tour, which begins with this Friday’s concert with the L.A. Phil. (Though it looks, from the wording on their site, like they’ll begin performances of their new work later into the tour.)