Music : Agaetis Byrjun

Rating: - Soaring, breathtaking, orgasmic.
Well. What a fantastic album! Since I can't be bothered with finding out all the track names I'll refer to them by track number. I purchased this album off the strength of track 2, a piece that I'd had the priveledge of hearing some months before the album was released. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. It is extreme chill-out which spirals around and around in a whirlpool before hitting a few magnificent seconds at the climax where the music suddenly becomes powerful and intense before dieing away again. I wasn't expecting the rest of the album to be as great. It is! This album soars! The average track length of over seven minutes gives an idea of the music this band produce. It's SLOW! Starts small and builds very very SLOWLY through crescendo and gradually added parts to a swell of noise.
The pick of the bunch are tracks 2, 5 (a single aswell as 2 with some interesting treatment of the drums), 7 (just an elaborate piano part which mutates over ten minutes to this incredible, string drenched monster) and 8 (a piece with the most uplifting melody I think I've ever heard, one which I reckon is worthy of any of the great tunesmiths that classical and romantic art music threw up). Tracks 4 (a bit cheesy) and 9(kinda unremarkable and unmemorable) are the weak spots, but it isn't as if they're bad or anything.
If you like Mogwai, Spiritualized, or anything similar then buy this album, adore it, love it, cherish it, cuddle it, build a display case for it... It's magnificent!

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Rating: - hopelandic??
This has been said before, but seems to have got lost... Agaetis Byrjun is NOT in Hopelandic! Olsen Olsen is the only 'Hopelandic' track. All of the other tracks are in regular Icelandic (although admittedly with lots of double meanings and hidden puns). I think part of the reason why this is still widely believed is beause ( ) is in Hopelandic, and because they've stopped including the lyric booklet in the UK release of the Agaetis Byrjun. From the first album only the title track Von is in Hopelandic (von is Icelandic for hope).

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Rating: - Imagine your favourite vista?
Think of the place u love the most. The place u would willingly spend the rest of your life at. The peace that surrounds and engulfs you. A place where time has no meaning. 5 minutes seems like a life time.Where your worries fade away, and all that is, is now and the moment.Where a smile seems to come over your face without you realising it. The view, the sounds, the air you breath, everything is worth dying for.A hot lazy summers afternoon.If you can imagine this then welcome to the world of Sigur Ros.A mind blowing CD. How can music FEEL this good? Serendipity at its best! Just sink into the music, and be comforted. Landscape music. BUY BUY THE CD. You will see what im raving about.

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Rating: - Strange and Beautiful
I bought this album on a friends recommendation without having heard any of Sigur Ros's music.
On first hearing it, I thought that it was all very strange and not what I would normally like.It all sounded depressing and not very accessable!

However after a couple of listens, I found that I started liking certain tracks. The album is definitely one to be listened to as a complete whole though. Sigur Ros themselves say that they sing in Hopelandic and that is a good description of the sound.

The sound is a mix of ethereal otherworldly "opera" ,folk, electronica and choral sound but it is more than this. I like the fact that it is so hard to describe the sound.

This is one of the best albums I have bought in a long time. I look forward to buying their other album.

Buy this and you will want to go to Iceland to find out what inspired Sigur Ros. Inspiring indeed!!

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Rating: - Pink Floyd meets Cocteau Twins
This is an absolute one off.

This is pure genre-busting beauty that deserves to last in the way J S Bach 'lasts'

Don't be put off by the Hopelandic imaginary language - this is more than saccharine wailing a la This Mortal Coil, don't be put off by the Thom Yorke post-'Kid A' seal of approval, this is so so so much more than Pink Floyd experimental indulgence.

It is a uniquely coherent piece of art which can enthuse a genuinely natural high. The only CD in my 300+ collection that I don't have to revert to the Random button to kick some mileage into.

It just hangs together so well. Passion soundscaped. Like nothing I've ever heard. I simply can't buy the new album because I'm still plumbing the depths of this one.

Sorry if this review seems to be hiding from a definition of what this band actually sounds like - it's just that it seems more of a haunting than a listening...