Sigur Rós: my love affair

I first fell in love with this band in high school. I used to watch The International Music Feed and be amazed at the nuance of creativity in the world. I used to watch it because MTV stopped playing music videos and the mainstream music at the time was so fucking boring. Anyway, oe day I watched the most inspiring music video of my life: Glósóli. The song literally means
glowing sun. The music video revolves around a picture of this drummer boy summoning the children in the land to find the sun. The song is a gradual epic climax to the point where these kids jump of the edge of a cliff and fly into the sun. It is beautiful and amazing.

Here is a little bio on the band.

Taken from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia


Sigur Rós is an Icelandic post-rock band with melodic, classical and minimalist elements. The band is known for its ethereal sound and lead singer Jónsi’s falsetto.



Jón Þór (Jónsi) Birgisson, Georg Hólm and Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson formed the group in Reykjavík in August 1994. Their name is taken from Jónsi's younger sister Sigurrós, who was born the same day as the band was. They soon won a record deal with the local Sugarcubes owned record label, Bad Taste. In 1997, they released Von (Hope) and in 1998 a remix collection named Von brigði. The name is Icelandic wordplay: Vonbrigði means "disappointment", but Von brigði means "hope alteration".

International acclaim came with 1999's Ágætis byrjun (An alright start) for which the band were joined by Kjartan Sveinsson. The album's reputation slowly spread by word of mouth over the next two years. Soon many critics worldwide hailed it as one of the best albums of its time and the band was playing with Radiohead and other big names. Three songs, Ágætis byrjun's title track, its first single "Svefn-g-englar", and a live take of the then-unreleased "Njósnavélin" (to become "Untitled #4") appeared in the Cameron Crowe film Vanilla Sky. The two songs also subsequently appeared in the television series Queer as Folk. Their music has also appeared in 24 (the TV series) with Ný batterí, CSI and CSI Miami. In 2004 Wes Anderson used "Starálfur" in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou as did the Emmy winning 2005 TV film The Girl in the Café and "Untitled 3" (a.k.a. Samskeyti) can be heard in the final scene from the Greg Araki film Mysterious Skin. They are also used in Enki Bilal's Immortel (Ad Vitam).

After the release of Ágætis byrjun, the band became perhaps most well known for Jónsi's signature style of playing guitar with the bow from a cello, accentuated with reverb, creating a sweeping, fluid sound that is unique for an electric guitar.

Drummer Ágúst left the band after the recording of Ágætis byrjun and was replaced by Orri Páll Dýrason. In 2002, their highly anticipated follow-up album was released. Upon release all tracks on the album were untitled, though the band later published song names on their website. Famously all of the lyrics on are sung in Vonlenska, also known as Hopelandic, a constructed language of nonsense syllables which resembles the sound of the Icelandic language. It has also been said that the listener is supposed to interpret their own meanings of the lyrics which can then be written in the blank pages in the album booklet.

In October of 2003, Sigur Rós joined Radiohead in composing music for Merce Cunningham's dance piece Split Sides; Sigur Rós’s three tracks were named Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do and released in March of 2004. The band's 1997 debut album Von also finally found a U.S. and U.K. release in October of 2004.

Their latest album, Takk... (Thanks...), combines their second album's style with a more rockish, structured sound, and was released on September 13, 2005, with a legal download of their first single, "Glósóli", made available on August 15. For North American fans, "Sæglópur" was made available for download on August 16. "Hoppípolla", the second official single from Takk..., was released on November 28 alongside a new studio remake of "Hafsól", a song that was previously released on the band's 1997 debut, Von. "Hoppípolla" was used in the trailers for the BBC's natural history series Planet Earth in 2006, as well as the closing credits for the 2006 FA Cup final and ITV's coverage of the 2006 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, adverts for the BBC's coverage of England games during the 2006 FIFA World Cup, on television advertisements for RTÉ's Gaelic Games coverage in Ireland and on an advert for Oxfam. It was also utilised on the trailer of the film Children of Men. Following this, demand for the single grew. It was made more widely available by EMI in consequence.

An extended Sæglópur EP was released on July 10, 2006 in most parts of the world and on August 8 in the United States. Its original release date was May 8, but because of the sudden demand of "Hoppípolla" it was pushed back from that date. Sigur Rós recorded three new songs to appear on the EP ("Refur", "Ó Fridur", and "Kafari").


A Sigur Rós concert in Hong KongIn July 2006, Sigur Rós finished a major world tour with stops in Europe, the United States, where they played a headline show at the Hollywood Bowl, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Japan. They followed up with a series of free outdoor concerts throughout Iceland in July, which were filmed for a future DVD release. The band has started work on a full-length follow up album to Takk..., which they expect to finish recording during 2007. They also performed twice in the United States in February.

In an interview with Fréttablaðið newspaper, Georg says it remains to be seen whether the band will be taking a totally new direction on the album. “We have finished recording a few songs but some more things need to be done. We don’t know exactly where the album is heading yet. We are really just experimenting at this stage. Some of the songs we recorded are old songs which we had written a while ago, unreleased material which we never got a chance to finish. We decided it was time they were recorded.” Georg says there is a possibility the album will be released this year but nothing is confirmed at this point.

To date, Sigur Rós have sold over 2 million albums worldwide.


This band sings in Icelandic and an invented ghost language called "hopelandic". It isn't a real language, of course. Sometimes singers have music with no words. Sometimes they fill in what are called "ghost lyrics" or lyrics that have no real meaning and are just there to sing along with to get the feeling of the melody. Instead of using ghost lyrics, they just use gibberish. It isn't so mysterious.

That song,Glósóli used to be my favorite of theirs until just recently. I found another video of theirs. The titles of the song: Sæglópur(sigh-CHLO-pur). Which translates:lost at sea. Here is the video. Also, very amazing.


Check out their myspace page here or at myspace.com/sigurros.

Check out their official website here or at sigurros.com