Although Radiohead has made it quite clear they won’t be releasing the music they composed for Merce Cunningham’s Split Sides, Sigur R?s has released the three pieces of music they composed as Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do, a three-song EP exclusively available from Apple’s iTunes store. Although a CD will be released in mid-March, iTunes is the only place you can (legitimately) get these tracks until then.
You can preview the songs here (you must have iTunes installed)-
1. Ba Ba
2. Ti Ki
3. Di Do
Here’s some more information from the Sigur R?s website-
These 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. The members of Sigur R?s performed them live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2003 Next Wave Festival, New York on October 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) comprising 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.
(Thanks to Sean.)
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