There’s an age-old but popular belief that’s if it’s obscure and esoteric, it has to be good; a belief more often than not brought about by a feeble mind and hand grappling hopelessly to reproduce the slight and complex strokes of intentional genius. In short, the best place for the feeble mind to hide is in obscurity. If no one knows your artistic intention, there’s an even greater likelihood they’ll fail to recognise there never was one. And no one exploits this perpetual stalemate better than those brazen cryptologists, Sigur Ros.
Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do is without doubt the most esoteric release of the Iceland band’s ten-year career. Scored for octogenarian US choreographer Merce Cunningham’s Dance Company’s 50th gala performance, Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do was performed alongside Radiohead’s similarly commissioned material at Brooklyn Academy of Music last October for the Dance Company’s Split Sides programme (where stage design, choreography, music, costume and lighting are chosen at random on the night of the performance by the throw of a dice)
Based around 20 minutes of quasi-Tubular Bells piano lines and percussive sounds derived from a range of suitably eccentric devices (including ballet shoes, the tap dancing feet of Merce Cunningham and little mice with clogs on) the record comprises three separate tracks: ‘Ba Ba’, ‘Ti Ki’ and ‘Di Do’ – all as monotonous as clockwork, all as delicate as bone china – and all those usual tender melodic nuances gone for a burton.
The artwork incorporates elements of Robert Heishman’s set design for Split Sides, as well as Merce’s stick-figure notations for choreography. It comes as a special digi-pack CD and one-sided 12-inch that also features a scarcely discernible etching from Merce Cunningham on the reverse side.
Wilful, skilful or simply disgraceful – I’ll let you decide its fate.