Following rumours they were to headline this year’s Harvest Festival, everbody’s favourite ethereal Icelandic quartet have confirmed that they’ll be heading our way this November.
Everguide reports the tour news was leaked during an interview with Sigur Rós frontman, Jónsi Þór Birgisson on triple j this morning by presenter Zan Rowe. When asked if the rumours concerning a year-end visit from the Icelandic ambient favourites were ture, Birgisson replied, “That is true, that is confirmed” citing we could expect them in November.
Though dates haven’t been published by the group on their official site yet, a previous interview with the singer by UK’s Drowned In Sound corroborates these dates; where he said that following “a short North American tour and a few European dates” that, “we’re off to Australia.”
The band’s return down under would mark their first shows here in four years. Their upcoming worldwide tour in in support of Valtari, the band’s seventh studio album, which was launched via world-wide listening party on the internet.
In related news, Birgisson also told Icelandic newspaper The Reykjavik Grapevine that fellow bandmate and multi-instrumentalist Kjartan Sveinsson would not be joining them on their latest global tour.
Squashing rumours that Sveinsson had quit the band, or that their future was in dispute, Jonsi told the paper that Kjartan’s decision to bypass their live show as because he was “tired of touring,’ add that he wants to “spend his time doing something else.”
Bassist Georg Hólm, who was questioned alongside Birgisson, also said that the time commitments to touring were “not necessarily the most productive.”
Sveinsson position will be fulfilled by three new additions to the line-up, including Hólm’s younger brother Kjartan Dagur Hólm on guitar, along with a keyboardist and an oboe player.
The expanded line-up hints at the band’s ambitions to return to their full, lush sound after they decided to reduce themselves to a simple quartet for last year’s tour, recorded live on the accompanying album and concert film Inni.
