SIGUR ROS ÁGÆTIS BYRJUN COVER TV
The album's tracks have also been featured in soundtracks "Starálfur" was used in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and the Emmy winning 2005 TV film The Girl in the Café. In 2001, Ágætis byrjun won the inaugural Shortlist Music Prize.Īn acclaimed music video was made for " Viðrar vel til loftárása". Ágætis byrjun was released in the United Kingdom in 2000, and in the North American market in 2001 by Fat Cat Records. After surprising success in Iceland, the album subsequently gained strong international buzz with numerous articles in many prominent publications, hype from internet message boards and blogs, as well as often exuberant critical praise. While released to little fanfare, the album quickly gained radio exposure in Iceland, and spent the autumn of 1999 climbing the Icelandic album charts, finally resting at the top for a number of weeks. As a result, many of the CDs were unusable due to glue stains. Sigur Rós assembled and glued together the cases of the first print of Ágætis byrjun themselves. This line is a reference to their two previous releases, Von and Von brigði. þetta er ágætis byrjun" which translates to "I gave you (plural) hope that became a disappointment.
The booklet cover for the CD edition of the album features the line: "Ég gaf ykkur von sem varð að vonbrigðum. The sketch on the cover was drawn by Gotti Bernhöft with a Bic Cristal ballpoint pen. Sigur Rós' subsequent album, ( ), used Vonlenska exclusively for its vocals. The strings in "Starálfur" itself are palindromic they are the same forwards and backwards.Īll vocals are sung in Icelandic, except for those on "Olsen Olsen" and the last section of the title track, which are sung in the gibberish language Vonlenska. The ten songs on the album include some self-reference: the introduction contains backmasked parts from the title track, and the last song, "Avalon", consists of a different take of an instrumental passage from "Starálfur" slowed to around a quarter of its original speed. Logo on the album cover in the font ShelleyAllegro BT Sigur Rós won an Iceland Music Award and the 2001 Shortlist Music Prize for this album. The name has also been translated as "An alright start." After hearing the song, he said it was "a good beginning" the name stuck. The album's title came from a friend hearing the first song they had written for the album, which would become the title track. Ágætis byrjun represented a substantial departure from the band's previous album Von, with that album's Cocteau Twins-esque dream pop and extended ambient soundscapes replaced by Jónsi Birgisson's now signature cello-bowed guitarwork and lush orchestration (using a double string octet amongst other orchestral elements). Ágætis byrjun was recorded between the summer of 1998 to the spring of 1999 with producer Ken Thomas, and became Sigur Rós's breakthrough album, both critically and commercially. Ágætis byrjun (Icelandic pronunciation: ow-gy-tiss bi-ar-yun, A good beginning ) is the second album by the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, which was released in 1999.