Sigur Rós
Von

When our first album came out, we had just put together the band and it was all like a dream. I played the record to my parents and they got petrified. Then my little sister, Sigurrós, started to cry. I went to the kitchen to prepare a coffee, my mother followed me and said: "mmmm, nice record".

The beginning is indeed spectral. The first quarter of an hour consists of distant silences, nearby noises, piercing screams, and chimes that calling them unsettling is an understatement.
I turn the light back on and wonder if it's Sigur Rós.
Yes, it's them, the beats of "Hún Jörð" and the atmospheres of "Dogun" remind me of some structure of ( )... then the "18 seconds of silence before dawn," before the sun rises from the sea and rides the narcotic 12 minutes of "Hafssól"... then the soft chant of "Von" and the woolly orchestrations of "Syndir Guðs" bring me back to Ágætis Byrjun.

I have just retraced the sound of Sigur Rós in 70 minutes, twisted and rarefied, which condense six years, from today to 1997, when this work saw the light, when Sigur Rós, brush in hand, repainted the studio in exchange for recording the album.
When they were still just the deformed cocoon of a stunning butterfly, unrecognizable from how we hear them today and yet already projected towards the future.

A debut with two faces, therefore, like the face of little Sigurrós on the cover: serene and dreamy like a little angel... who, behind the purplish-red jewel-case, grins devilishly.