Riceboy Sleeps is the debut album by Jónsi and Alex, the side project of Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi Birgisson. Given that there's an and there, I feel kind of bad about describing it as one sort of famous guy's side project. That's kind of like describing Eyes Wide Shut as starring Tom Cruise and his at-the-time wife. Nicole Kidman is a person too! A more important one than Tom Cruise, even. I don't know that Alex is more important than Jonsi, whose name I'm going to stop spelling with that weird thing over the o, but he, too (I mean Alex), is a person. Too. I'm not entirely sure what more I can say about him. He's Jonsi's boyfriend? That's what the internet seems to be telling me. The album started as an art book, and then later became an album. The internet told me that, too.

But human elements aside, Riceboy Sleeps is effectively ambient Sigur Ros, who I am also going to stop spelling with that thing over the o. This review can effectively conclude here. It is a simple logical formula. Like coding. Observe:

if(you.like("Sigur Ros") && you.like("ambient")
....WillLikeRiceboySleeps = true;
else if(!you.like("Sigur Ros") && !you.like("ambient")
....WillLikeRiceboySleeps = false;
else
....WillLikeRiceboySleeps = maybe?;

I don't know, I guess I've been writing too much code lately. Anyway, if you like ambient and you like Sigur Ros, buy the album. If you like neither, avoid it at all costs. If you like one but not the other, I still recommend giving it a whirl. It is very much and without deviation the sum of those two things. Sigur Ros and ambient. Ambient and Sigur Ros. The music is ethereal and pretty in that Sigur Ros way - though with a distinct and almost complete absence of Jonsi's trademark falsetto vocals. It is largely without rhythm or time signatures, in that ambient way. It is moving and heartbreaking and uplifting in that Sigur Ros way. It is each of those things vaguely and subtly in that ambient way.

I've been listening to Riceboy Sleeps pretty heavily over the last several weeks, since it arrived. It fits this time of year (i.e. winter for all of you weirdos not in the northern hemisphere) perfectly, and is the perfect companion piece to ( ). Which, in case you are not familiar with Sigur Ros, is actually the name of an album, and not just where I forgot to type something. Both are winter albums, in my view, but they're two entirely different portions of the season, inverses of each other. ( ) is sad and lonely, it's hours of darkness and little of light, it's numb cold and isolation, it's a dead world with few signs of life, and only a few faint traces of uplifting hope. Riceboy Sleeps, on the other hand, is how beautiful the bare tree branches are after an ice storm, the soft white and quiet calm of a world blanketed in snow, the feel of the sharp, cold air and the sight of your own breath even as your coat and hat and mittens keep you warm.

Musically the album is comprised largely of noise; identifiable instruments are in short supply. The opening track, Happiness - which was my introduction to the band, by way of the Dark Was the Night compilation - is full of bubbling noise and notes played backwards. The main chord progression, played by a string band - Amina, to be precise, who open for and back Sigur Ros on tour - is the only place where the track settles into something resembling a conventional song. The progression is pretty and sorrowful, and is repeated over and over, droning on while the noises on the periphery fade out and in and change, eventually coming to the fore as the strings dissolve. Vocals appear from time to time, too, lifting out of the audio mist only barely. Atlas Song and Boy 1904 have choirs of some sort - possibly children's choirs? - and Indian Summer features the Jonsi vocals that are familiar to anyone who's a fan of Sigur Ros. Though, here, unlike in Sigur Ros, they're layered and low enough in the mix that they don't dominate.

Next to strings, the most common instrument is the piano, which appears both raw and warped into faint, surreal shape by effects in Indian Summer. It's at its best in perhaps my favorite piece on the album, Stokkseyri, where a rhythmless set of arpeggios played on the piano forms a lovely cascade of notes that start the song, eventually becoming more and more faint under the weight of increasing reverb. Eventually the song becomes a cocoon of ambient noise, with no real sources of sound. Boy 1904 is awash in reverb, pretty and distant, like a stained glass window in a cathedral or the ice-covered limbs of a tall tree. Howl is a fine example of why the album is superior to many other ambient ones: any song on Riceboy Sleeps that's as long as Howl is (eight and a half minutes) has multiple parts, has lulls and swells, has momentum and change. After Howl's climax subsides, Sleeping Giant, the final piece on the disc, lets the album fade out as an ambient whisper, distant and wispy organs fading beneath the creak of the bellows of an accordion opened and closed without playing notes.

When it comes to recommending this album, I must go back to my earlier formula: if you like Sigur Ros and ambient, this is so for you. If you like neither, disregard it. Either of the two, though - or perhaps if you're unfamiliar with either or both of the two - and I really do recommend Riceboy Sleeps. It's pretty and ethereal and moving, and I don't know that I own or have ever heard an ambient album that I like more.