MUM with DJ
WABI at the Rivoli (332 Queen West),
Saturday (July 20), 9 pm. $15.
416-596-1908.
Rating: NNNNN
Coming out of Iceland with a mandate to present the warmer side of chilled-out electro-fusion, mum were in jeopardy of being written off as Sigur Ros Jr. even before signing with their countrymen’s UK label, Fat Cat.
The soothing laptop lullabies of their glacially paced latest disc, Finally We Are No One (Fat Cat/Fusion III), might never have been heard at dinner parties outside of Reykjavik had wider interest in the group not been stirred up by the appearance of the mum twins, Kristin and Gyda Valtysdottir, on the cover of Belle and Sebastian’s Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant (Matador) disc.
Suddenly, the siblings were celebrities by association and mum was the word. So what’s the connection?
“We knew Stuart Murdoch from playing with Belle and Sebastian as part of the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival,” says Kristin Valtysdottir from a stop in New York.
“But I don’t know the reason for using the photograph of us — I haven’t asked. Maybe he just wanted to come to Iceland.”
It’s interesting that mum are more famous for their tenuous association with Belle and Sebastian — which besides the photo, amounts to two concert performances and an unfinished soccer match — than the gentle dripping sounds they create.
They hope to change that on their current North American tour. It brings them, with their accordions in tow, to the Rivoli for a highly anticipated Toronto debut Saturday (July 20).
“I guess it’s true that more people have seen my face on that cover than have heard our album,” allows Valtysdottir. “Once somebody brought a Belle and Sebastian poster to a show for me to sign, but I’m not famous.
“If signing autographs is what famous people do, then I’ll quit doing it immediately.”