3 New Sigur Rós Tunes Now Available At iTunes

Beginning today, BA BA TI KI DI DO— the three pieces of music Sigur Rós originally composed for the Split Sides performance of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company—will be available exclusively through iTunes. A commercial CD and vinyl release will follow in mid-March.

The three pieces of music comprising BA BA TI KI DI DO were originally written for the Split Sides* performance of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the most recent dance by Merce Cunningham. Sigur Rós performed them live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 2003 Next Wave Festival on Oct. 14, 2003 and again in Paris at The Theatre de la Ville between Dec 2-7, 2003. On these occasions the band improvised a 20-minute section of music over a previously recorded backing track using two sheet-fed music boxes, a glockenspiel and a specially homemade percussive instrument ("bummsett" in Icelandic) comprised of eight ballet shoes on a rack. The backing tracks incorporated recordings of Merce Cunningham's voice and the sound of his tap-dancing feet recorded at the Merce Cunningham Studio in Manhattan. The results of the live improvisation (which came to mirror some elements of the choreography) were recorded at the band's studio outside Reykjavik, Iceland in late Nov. 2003. The three sections—"Ba Ba," "Ti Ki" and "Di Do"—are designed to be played in any order.

*Split Sides' choreography and each collaborative element were created in two distinctive parts, such that, for each performance the order for each element changes depending on the roll of the dice allowing for thirty two possible combinations. The five elements were choreography by Merce Cunningham, music by Radiohead and Sigur Rós, décor by Robert Heishman and Catherine Yass, costumes by James Hall, and lighting by James F. Ingalls.

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