JONSI AND ALEX SOMERS TO GIVE FIRST EVER EUROPEAN PERFORMANCE OF "RICEBOY SLEEPS".

NME | By Rhian Daly

The album has only been played live once before.

Jónsi and Alex Somers have announced details of the first ever European live performance of their album ‘Riceboy Sleeps’.

The ambient record was released in 2009 and featured a string quartet, the Icelandic band Amiina and the Kópavogsdætur Choir.

The duo will be joined by the London Contemporary Orchestra for the performance, which will take place at London’s Barbican Centre on July 8. Jónsi, Somers, and the LCO will be conducted by Rob Ames during the show, while the orchestra’s arrangement will be done by David Handler. Tickets will go on sale at 10am on Friday (February 1). 

‘Riceboy Sleeps’ has only ever been performed live once before. The pair brought the album to life at Manhattan’s St Paul The Apostle church in 2010.

Earlier this month, it was announced that Jónsi’s band Sigur Rós have scored the soundtrack to a new Taiwanese dance performance called ’22° Lunar Halo’.

In a statement, the band described the piece as one which “excavates our deepest fear toward ourselves as human beings through bodies of dancers morphing into concrete symbols of anxieties, struggles, desires and loneliness in the lunatic, ever-changing world of high-end technology, and eventually leads us to a slim hope of love and inner serenity.”

In December, the group returned with new music at an event in Los Angeles. The music was premiered at a “Liminal” sound bath event last month and included remixes of music from ‘Tónandi’, the audiovisual augmented reality experience they created, alongside other works from their back catalogue.