Jónsi & Alex is Jónsi Birgisson, Sigur Rós vocalist/guitar player-with-bow extraordinaire, and Alex Somers, musician and visual artist to, among others, Sigur Rós.  On their debut album, Riceboy Sleeps, they combine for one mother of a meandering glide through the subtleties of sound.  The album started as a side project between Sigur Rós recordings and that’s about the best place to start talking about it.  While Sigur Rós two most recent studio releases, Takk… and Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaus are—dare I say—more accessible/less steam-of-consciousness than their predecessors— Jónsi & Alex with Riceboy Sleeps veer backwards more towards the epic ethereal territory of ( ).  The spacey, outer-worldly journey of Riceboy Sleeps feels like a walk through the valley of imagination; at times it sounds like it could be the lost soundtrack to a film you’ve never seen but know the script by heart, and yet it can just as well be the strange look by a stranger you can’t take your eyes off of.  Spare of almost any vocals, Riceboy Sleeps focuses more on the symmetry of the submissive, each song seamlessly bleeding into the next, free of any real climax, but sustained of something special, always beneath the surface, but never without a face.  With its light sound Riceboy Sleeps isn’t for the light-hearted; if you want the meat and potatoes of Sigur Rós you better point yourself somewhere else.  But if you can walk into Riceboy Sleeps with an open mind, Jónsi & Alex will help open your ears.  Give it a chance and you’ll be amazed what you hear; you don’t have to be a believer to believe.