Sigur Rós: Ágætis Byrjun (2LP, 180g) [KRUNK]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set on 180g vinyl copies the original packaging spec. Ágætis Byrjun won the inaugural Shortlist Music Prize, and Pitchfork later placed it eighth on its list of the top 200 albums of the 2000s.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Original packaging replicated

About the album

When a friend heard the first song Sigur Rós wrote for this album, he called it a good beginning, and the name stuck. The Icelandic band had made one record already, but this is where Jónsi Birgisson's bowed guitar, new keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson and a double string octet came together into something nobody had quite heard before. It climbed to the top of the Icelandic chart in the autumn of 1999.

Producer Ken Thomas helped them build those slow, glacial swells. "Svefn-g-englar" turned up in Vanilla Sky, "Starálfur" (whose strings play the same backwards as forwards) in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and "Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása" got an acclaimed video. Most of it is sung in Icelandic, with "Olsen Olsen" in the band's invented Vonlenska, and the closing "Avalon" is a passage from "Starálfur" slowed to about a quarter speed.

The band glued together the first CD cases by hand, and the foetus on the cover was drawn with a ballpoint pen. The title translates as a good beginning, or, as some prefer, an alright start, which may be the most modest thing ever printed on a modern classic.

Also at Kops: more Sigur Rós on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Krúnk (cat# KRUNK8LP), a reissue of the 1999 album.