Sigur Rós: 'You can hear the Sigur Rós sound. I like to describe it as being a little introverted'

Sigur Rós: ‘You can hear the Sigur Rós sound. I like to describe it as being a little introverted’

Words by Ollie Midson

Sigur Rós were once considered by the mainstream as one of the strangest bands in the world, from one of the strangest lands in the world.

Iceland is, after all, a country where darkness envelopes the country for nine months of the year and the summer days never seem to end. That’s never impeded the career of Sigur Rós though, who have returned to the world stage, announcing an upcoming new album and a world tour that’s hitting Australia this month.

We caught up with Georg “Goggi” Holm over Zoom to talk about this upcoming string of shows and what’s been happening in the past, present and future for Sigur Rós.

Read Melbourne’s most comprehensive range of features and interviews here.

BM: First of all, welcome back to Australia, we’re very excited to have you. Are you all happy to be touring again after the last few years we’ve had?

G: Yes, absolutely. Originally, we had plans of starting the tour we’re on a little bit earlier, but, you know, plans changed, as everything has been doing lately (especially in the music industry). But, it didn’t matter that much, it wasn’t that much of a difference. It was a little bit scary at first, going out into this “semi-post-COVID” world. We hadn’t played a show in years, so it was a little bit strange and nerve wracking. We weren’t 100% sure what was gonna happen. But when we first stepped on stage and played that first note, it was just the way it was supposed to be. It all came together very well.

As you mentioned before, COVID presented a lot of challenges for everyone around the world. With Jónsi being stuck in Los Angeles, were you still able to keep busy with Sigur Rós, despite the circumstances?

Through most of the COVID time, we weren’t doing that much music together. There’s always communication between us but it was definitely strange, especially for Jónsi to be stuck in LA, while his family is in Iceland. It was a bit weird for him to be away for such a long time from everyone. Even before COVID was…not really “done”, we had already started working a little bit, and it was definitely strange, meeting each other In the studio and playing with masks and having COVID tests. But we got the hang of it and in some weird way it’s become quite normal as well.

This tour also marks the return of keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson to the band. What was that first session in the studio like with him after his nine-year absence?

That’s a good question! It was really interesting for us. When we started rehearsing for the tour, we made a very long list of songs we wanted to try out and see which ones we would play live. As soon as we started playing, it felt really natural. It’s hard to describe but it just felt like he never left. It felt…I’m not gonna say it didn’t feel “not special”- it was very special – but it felt quite normal, in a weird way. It was kinda like “that’s the part that’s been missing for a while”, like finding something again. Definitely fantastic.

Sigur Rós seems to be a musical chameleon that covers several different musical ideas with each album you put out. For example, 2012’s Valtari is a very ambient and ethereal album while your 2013 record Kveikur is very dark and abrasive. What sounds and tones can we expect to hear on this new album that you’ve recently announced?

It’s always interesting for us when we start a record. It has a life of its own. We usually try and mix up the method of creating the album, and this album is definitely different again (laughter). You can hear the Sigur Rós sound in the music, I don’t think you can ever take it out of it. Kjartan actually described it earlier as “simpler”. It’s not as rhythm based as our last few records, and it’s more expansive. It sounds big and it reels you in a little bit. I like to describe it as being a little introverted.

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of your third album “( )”. Do you have any exciting plans to celebrate the milestone?

Yeah, we definitely do have plans. I’m not 100% sure I’m allowed to talk about it yet, but there will be things happening this year to celebrate the record. I promise that. I recently listened to the whole record again for the first time in a long time. It actually surprised me a little bit. In my head, it was just the pain of creating it, because it was a very difficult record to make it. We ended up scrapping it about four or five times, and it was a very slow process, to make that record. And when I listened to it again twenty years later, it just took me by surprise how good it sounded and how good it was.

In 2020, you released a lost recording dating back to 2002 called Odin’s Raven Magic, which was an hour-long orchestral piece inspired by the ancient Norse poem of the same name. What was writing for that like compared to your typical Sigur Rós record?

Odin’s Raven Magic was recorded so many years ago, it was a strange sort of thing. A friend of ours came to us for a festival in Iceland and asked us to create this piece of music for it. We did perform it, I think, five or six times, all in all. It was something that was meant to come out years and years ago.

It was filmed in Paris and was meant to be released as a film. We tried more than once to make it work, but it just never felt right. So we decided to, maybe, let go of it. It just seemed such a shame that it was sitting there collecting dust, basically. So, we just had to release it. But to answer your question, that was a very different project. We’ve done projects before where we had to create music for something else, like pieces for dance and films. It’s always a different approach.

With Kveikur, for example, the change of method dictated what happened. We didn’t have a studio at the time so we basically rented a loft in Reykjavik and just started writing songs. And they were very basic at first; they were more like an attitude than a song. We started creating all kinds of different sounds and atmospheres and it was just a matter of piecing things together. It was an interesting album to create and it was definitely more sort of noisy and aggressive than anything we’d done in the past. I don’t know where that came from, but it was interesting the way things happened.

The art direction for your new live show, which was designed in collaboration with Bruno Poet, Sarah Hopper, Damian Hale and Matt Daw, is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. What was the inspiration behind the geometric light and rope sculptures that envelop the stage?

Every time we start think about touring, that is always something that comes up. What are we doing? What does the show look like? We actually originally thought about almost doing nothing, just having very simple lights. But It kind of evolved (in typical Sigur Rós style) into something completely different. I can’t remember exactly how the geometrics came in but I do remember when we saw it for the first time we went “Wow! Okay, that’s great. We should play around with this.” You can twist and turn these things and they will just change the whole atmosphere. It’s a very simple way of making some sort of impact visually, I think. It kind of tied into our original idea of making everything really simple.

Sigur Rós continue their world tour along the East Coast of Australia this week, more details below.

Sigur Rós Australian Tour Dates