Returning to homeland: Sigur Ros' Heima and the cultural landscapes of Post-Rock
The complex ways music sounds out space cannot be reduced to a mirror theory in which the contours of place are simply reflected in music's emotional architectures. Post-rock is a fruitful genre for problematising this notion, as its practitioners are motivated to sonorously re-construct, or at...
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New Zealand Geographical Society
2010
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Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/153269 http://www.nzgs.co.nz/ |
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ftswinburne:tle:2ec40c63-02bf-495c-9464-f51750db76d0:28f49f06-0da8-44be-9edc-ad1dd0a9c582:1 2023-05-15T16:46:34+02:00 Returning to homeland: Sigur Ros' Heima and the cultural landscapes of Post-Rock Fletcher, Lawson Swinburne University of Technology 2010 http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/153269 http://www.nzgs.co.nz/ unknown New Zealand Geographical Society http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/153269 http://www.nzgs.co.nz/ Copyright © 2010. New Zealand Geographical Society Conference 2010 (NZGS 2010) with the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG), Christchurch, New Zealand, 05-08 July 2010 Conference paper 2010 ftswinburne 2019-09-07T23:39:19Z The complex ways music sounds out space cannot be reduced to a mirror theory in which the contours of place are simply reflected in music's emotional architectures. Post-rock is a fruitful genre for problematising this notion, as its practitioners are motivated to sonorously re-construct, or at least mourn, the spatial erasures of late capitalism, epitomised by the apocalyptic melancholy of urban redevelopment represented in Canadian ensemble Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Icelandic quartet Sigur Rós maintain a skewed relationship to this primarily American genre, seeming instead to simply evoke the untouched natural beauty of their homeland, fulfilling discourses of Scandinavian 'purity' registered in the perennial critical descriptor for their sound: 'glacial'. Following the band's return to Iceland for a series of free concerts, the 2007 documentary Heima ostensibly affirms Western audiences' perception of their music as little more than the soundtrack to a 'Welcome to Iceland' tourism reel. Yet must things be read this way? This paper considers music's central role in constructing 'geographic knowledge' through a brief history of the affective cartography of post-rock, before critically reading the highly mediated forms - digital documentary, concert spectacle and recorded music - that constitute Sigur Rós' cultural landscape. I highlight the group's revival of the political project of post-rock through their accounting for capital's ecological refuse points, whilst paradoxically questioning their music as reflective of a 'natural' Iceland. Heima, that is, performs a conscious, if contradictory, audiovisual relationship to Iceland, one that is as much motivated by a conservative 'return home' as it is by a need to question one's homeland. Conference Object Iceland Swinburne University of Technology: Swinburne Research Bank Post Rock ENVELOPE(-37.983,-37.983,-54.017,-54.017) |
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Swinburne University of Technology: Swinburne Research Bank |
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description |
The complex ways music sounds out space cannot be reduced to a mirror theory in which the contours of place are simply reflected in music's emotional architectures. Post-rock is a fruitful genre for problematising this notion, as its practitioners are motivated to sonorously re-construct, or at least mourn, the spatial erasures of late capitalism, epitomised by the apocalyptic melancholy of urban redevelopment represented in Canadian ensemble Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Icelandic quartet Sigur Rós maintain a skewed relationship to this primarily American genre, seeming instead to simply evoke the untouched natural beauty of their homeland, fulfilling discourses of Scandinavian 'purity' registered in the perennial critical descriptor for their sound: 'glacial'. Following the band's return to Iceland for a series of free concerts, the 2007 documentary Heima ostensibly affirms Western audiences' perception of their music as little more than the soundtrack to a 'Welcome to Iceland' tourism reel. Yet must things be read this way? This paper considers music's central role in constructing 'geographic knowledge' through a brief history of the affective cartography of post-rock, before critically reading the highly mediated forms - digital documentary, concert spectacle and recorded music - that constitute Sigur Rós' cultural landscape. I highlight the group's revival of the political project of post-rock through their accounting for capital's ecological refuse points, whilst paradoxically questioning their music as reflective of a 'natural' Iceland. Heima, that is, performs a conscious, if contradictory, audiovisual relationship to Iceland, one that is as much motivated by a conservative 'return home' as it is by a need to question one's homeland. |
author2 |
Swinburne University of Technology |
format |
Conference Object |
author |
Fletcher, Lawson |
spellingShingle |
Fletcher, Lawson Returning to homeland: Sigur Ros' Heima and the cultural landscapes of Post-Rock |
author_facet |
Fletcher, Lawson |
author_sort |
Fletcher, Lawson |
title |
Returning to homeland: Sigur Ros' Heima and the cultural landscapes of Post-Rock |
title_short |
Returning to homeland: Sigur Ros' Heima and the cultural landscapes of Post-Rock |
title_full |
Returning to homeland: Sigur Ros' Heima and the cultural landscapes of Post-Rock |
title_fullStr |
Returning to homeland: Sigur Ros' Heima and the cultural landscapes of Post-Rock |
title_full_unstemmed |
Returning to homeland: Sigur Ros' Heima and the cultural landscapes of Post-Rock |
title_sort |
returning to homeland: sigur ros' heima and the cultural landscapes of post-rock |
publisher |
New Zealand Geographical Society |
publishDate |
2010 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/153269 http://www.nzgs.co.nz/ |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-37.983,-37.983,-54.017,-54.017) |
geographic |
Post Rock |
geographic_facet |
Post Rock |
genre |
Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_source |
New Zealand Geographical Society Conference 2010 (NZGS 2010) with the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG), Christchurch, New Zealand, 05-08 July 2010 |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/153269 http://www.nzgs.co.nz/ |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2010. |
_version_ |
1766036674701164544 |