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Riceboy Sleeps has all the majestic calm of Sigur Ros with none of the dramatic storm, all of the lull and none of the squall.
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Riceboy Sleeps is more like a film, shot exquisitely in various breathtaking spaces, where the plot never moves forward because nothing ever goes wrong.
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Riceboy Sleeps' is a tedious album of orchestral drones, produced by manipulating piano, strings and choir samples on solar-powered laptops
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This is beautifully fragile music, not disposable but built to last.
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Riceboy Sleeps can keep you company in your cubicle or gridlock traffic.
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Mostly wordless and free of Birgisson's trademark rapturous build-and-release, Riceboy Sleeps is more ideally suited for yoga poses or total headphone absorption.
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Riceboy Sleeps isn't quite awful; on the contrary, there is enough warmth and prettiness to give the record some value. But by the same token, it's certainly not fantastic either, and therein lies the great problem with the whole project.
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It all combines to make a delicate, sad, little record, but one that ripples with beauty.
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Given that Sigur Ros seem to be going to increasing lengths with each record to seem less abstract and more human, a collection that unbinds itself from those constraints is, it turns out, a justifiable and often awe-inspiring exercise.
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Put simply, it's a deeply beautiful record.
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Slowly bowed strings mingle with chimes and occasional vocals on highlights 'Indian Summer' and the 'Boy 1904,' but pretty much all of Riceboy Sleeps stands to mesmerize if met in the right acquiescent mood.
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Under The RadarWhile not an album for those expecting the driving, energetic thump of 'Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysinger,' Riceboy Sleeps is an excellent introduction to Birgisson and Somer's work. [Summer 2009, p.62]
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MojoThe strongest parts of this record have a yearning, almost devotional quality which can unlock something in the patient listeners. [Aug 2009, p.96]
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Riceboy Sleeps is an elegiac set of powerfully evocative songs, functioning at its best as lovely background music while flipping through the pages of the art book it's bundled with. Listened to unaccompanied and in its entirety, the experience is frustrating and unpleasant, and its bloated feel renders a lot of it impotent.
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If they cut out about half of the songs and focused more on the parts that sounded less like Sigur Ros, Riceboy Sleeps would be a much stronger record.
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It's true that Riceboy Sleeps is no departure from New Age, is in fact a strengthening of at least Birgisson's place at the centre of its indie iterations. But it also takes the formula of another band a lot of people like and bends it just enough to make that formula interesting again.
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An hour or so later I finally succumbed to my bed, content. I can only imagine Riceboy does so in kind.
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It's more than just the counterpoint to electronic instrumental buzz-bands like Ratatat and Animal Collective; it's 68 minutes of intricate tension-building and release, with a keen eye towards the redemptive powers of contemplation--and nature sounds.
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UncutThese nine abstract sound paintings strip away the guitars, drums and vocals of Sigur Ros to liberate the avant-classical spirit within. [Aug 2009, p.87]
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At times introspective, often breathtaking, and at no stage executed in any other way than meticulous perfection, to the patient listener Riceboy Sleeps is a masterpiece of generative ambience.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 15
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Mixed: 1 out of 15
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Negative: 0 out of 15
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Feb 2, 2012
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Dec 4, 2020
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JeffW.Jul 27, 2009Great album!