Good weather for airstrikes.
The music doesn't have anything to do with the title, but the story behind it is that some TV weatherman noted the Icelandic happy blue sky weather one day was "good weather for airstrikes," referencing the on-going war in Bosnia. One of those quotes that'll never be forgotten. It impresst Sigur Rós enough to make it a song title.
Viðrar vel til loftárása is a disturbing track on their album Ágætis Byrjun and I can't get enough of it. It's incredibly sad, the lap steel guitar crying. Play an electric guitar with a cello bow with some elbow and really create screaming angry and strange discord. After absolute silence and no words and being resigned that today, nothing's really going to change, we ride high on illusions of having it all, which shatter and crash down like skyscrapers, and life feels like two steps forward and ten back, and failing dreams make life just shit, and feeling that the only thing God created worth anything is a tomorrow, that's hope that's harmoniously reassuring and discordantly not at all. That's really why the piano bass drums bowed guitar string quartet lap steel guitar can start to play peace beautifully harmonic and it sneaks up on you and it's now frenetic and dissolved into something insane anxious beautifully discordant. I don't understand it, but it's beautiful anyway. That tomorrow business, I've no faith in it, so Viðrar vel til loftárása is good weather for hopelessness. But, Benjamín, it ends so beautifully… Yeah, but I've forever woken up on left foot… (to shamelessly misquote a friend). How Sigur Rós has made discord sound so amazing and joyous, well, I don't understand that either.
I spent a lot of enjoyable hours over many many weekends this past winter, putting together this music video, clips from my trip to Iceland and clips of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption, to back the full 10 minutes of the track. When Sigur Rós plays Viðrar vel til loftárása live, there is always a long pause, a silence, a prayer, after we had a dream, we had it all.... so, I've inserted the pause from their Heima concert, in Reykjavík 2006.
I allow myself to translate the last line as the best thing God has created is a tomorrow. Literally, it's a new day. But in English, a tomorrow has the poetic of a sometime in the future one can look forward to, to a time when things might be different, that in English, a new day doesn't quite do. It's practically the only line that can be translated literally. So I didn't.
The music doesn't have anything to do with the title, but the story behind it is that some TV weatherman noted the Icelandic happy blue sky weather one day was "good weather for airstrikes," referencing the on-going war in Bosnia. One of those quotes that'll never be forgotten. It impresst Sigur Rós enough to make it a song title.
Viðrar vel til loftárása (view in YouTube)
Viðrar vel til loftárása is a disturbing track on their album Ágætis Byrjun and I can't get enough of it. It's incredibly sad, the lap steel guitar crying. Play an electric guitar with a cello bow with some elbow and really create screaming angry and strange discord. After absolute silence and no words and being resigned that today, nothing's really going to change, we ride high on illusions of having it all, which shatter and crash down like skyscrapers, and life feels like two steps forward and ten back, and failing dreams make life just shit, and feeling that the only thing God created worth anything is a tomorrow, that's hope that's harmoniously reassuring and discordantly not at all. That's really why the piano bass drums bowed guitar string quartet lap steel guitar can start to play peace beautifully harmonic and it sneaks up on you and it's now frenetic and dissolved into something insane anxious beautifully discordant. I don't understand it, but it's beautiful anyway. That tomorrow business, I've no faith in it, so Viðrar vel til loftárása is good weather for hopelessness. But, Benjamín, it ends so beautifully… Yeah, but I've forever woken up on left foot… (to shamelessly misquote a friend). How Sigur Rós has made discord sound so amazing and joyous, well, I don't understand that either.
I spent a lot of enjoyable hours over many many weekends this past winter, putting together this music video, clips from my trip to Iceland and clips of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption, to back the full 10 minutes of the track. When Sigur Rós plays Viðrar vel til loftárása live, there is always a long pause, a silence, a prayer, after we had a dream, we had it all.... so, I've inserted the pause from their Heima concert, in Reykjavík 2006.
I allow myself to translate the last line as the best thing God has created is a tomorrow. Literally, it's a new day. But in English, a tomorrow has the poetic of a sometime in the future one can look forward to, to a time when things might be different, that in English, a new day doesn't quite do. It's practically the only line that can be translated literally. So I didn't.
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