Happy 25th Anniversary to Sigur Rós’ second studio album Ágætis byrjun, originally released June 12, 1999.
There are a lot of things to love about Sigur Rós’ Ágætis Byrjun (1999): Jónsi’s celestial falsetto, the titanic sound of the cello bow on the electric guitar, and the meandering song structures. My favorite is the rattling hi-hat on “Ný Batterí,” which jangles so aggressively and so, well, analog-ly.
This is because Ágætis Byrjun is so clean, so alien, that it sounds like it comes from outer space: a squeaky-clean world run by computers that, through some technologically divine process, delivered to us a perfect 71 minutes of music. The sound is barren but also rich, distant but also comforting. It oscillates between lush string soundscapes and hard-hitting guitar and drum sections. It holds secrets but begs you to find them. You’d have to think of popular music very differently to arrive at Ágætis Byrjun.
Which is why I love the hi-hat so much. It is so transparently human. It jangles a different way each time. Sometimes drummer Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson leaves the cymbals slightly more open; sometimes they’re tighter. It’s not a copy-and-paste of the same sound. It’s a guy playing the drums.
This isn’t some lazy “electronic music is bad” argument. Ágætis Byrjun presents itself as so not-of-this-planet that it’s hard to understand that it was recorded with the same instrumentation as, like, a Strokes album. Jónsi claimed on the band’s website when the album was released, “We are simply gonna change music forever, and the way people think about music.” You would think that such a thing would require a giant technological leap forward. In fact, it just needed a leap in creativity. In an age where we tend to substitute the former for the latter, Ágætis Byrjun only becomes more inspirational.
The creative boldness is clear in the album’s treatment of form. It begins with a largely ambient introduction track, which sounds like a gathering storm. Then, a high E on the keyboard repeats every eight beats, sounding like a radar beacon in an otherwise desolate landscape. It’s just one note, but it provides a sense of grounding. The note persists when the first full track, “Svefn-g-englar” starts up, and the storm intensifies. The note briefly disappears, but after the storm vanishes and Georg Hólm’s bass slides in, it reappears. Despite a short absence, it feels like we have climbed out of a tunnel to see a beautiful, familiar landscape. This opens the space for the rest of the track to fill in, as we set out in this new direction. It is a single note, a rather unremarkable one, but it gathers so much meaning.
Listen to the Album:
This whole gambit is humble. The band does not hammer the transitions to elevate the drama. To produce this magnificent sonic vista, Sigur Rós didn’t need a searing crash of timpani or an army of tremeloing guitars, they stayed small. The restraint involved in making this intense effect without resorting to melodrama reveals that the band is in full control of their art.
This control reverberates throughout the record. On “Starálfur,” a string octet (plus interspersed keyboards) is the only accompaniment for the vocals during the song’s first three minutes. When the strings are replaced by a deadened guitar at the end of the first chorus, it makes perfect sense even though it is a left-field choice at best. “Olsen Olsen” is a song layered so carefully that it evolves glacially, like the best minimalist composers, then flips a switch and introduces a jaunty melody that defines the second half of the track.
None of this makes any sense on paper. I don’t see a reason to do any of this in the first place. Ágætis Byrjun has no interest in what should work. It just does what it does, but not because it’s from another planet, and not because a computer made it so. Rather, it happened because people are endlessly curious about the limits of our own creativity.
Sigur Rós would go on to bring alien sound and form to Earth on future albums; I’m partial to the expanded use of minimalism on () (2002) and the more melodic new release, ÁTTA (2023). But Ágætis Byrjun will always be special for opening the door to all of those sounds and songs, a catalog that is so deeply human because it sounds so unfamiliar.
Listen: