Category: Sigur Ros

To celebrate the upcoming release of Ethan Hayden’s 33 1/3 on Sigur Rós, we bring you the fourth and final installment of Sigur Rós week. Sigur Rós only made one music video to promote ( ), and that was for the album’s first song, “Untitled No. 1” or “Vaka.”  In my book, I write a fair amount about the video, which depicts children playing in an ashen post-apocalyptic wasteland.  I draw the comparison to Peter Brook’s famous 1963 adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, particularly the scene in…

To celebrate the upcoming release of Ethan Hayden’s 33 1/3 on Sigur Rós, we bring you the third installment of Sigur Rós week. The first Sigur Rós song to be sung in the nonsensical “Hopelandic” language was the title track from the band’s 1997 debut album, Von.  If “Von” is marked by one quality in particular, it is a sense of distance.  The production coats the song in thick trails of reverb, making each element seem as if it is being heard from across some great divide.  The song’s pulse…

To celebrate the upcoming release of Ethan Hayden’s 33 1/3 on Sigur Rós, we bring you the second installment of Sigur Rós week. There are many aspects that contribute to the sense of otherworldliness in Sigur Rós’s music:  the instrumentation, effects, sense of space, nonsensical texts, etc.  One of the most significant, however, is the plethora of voices which permeate the album.  Sometimes these voices are clearly present, occupying the foreground of the music, acting as its focal point.  Other times, these voices are hidden, camouflaged behind a film of…