Ágætis byrjun

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2024: #43 An album with a rating higher than 4.0 on RYM. (36th album)

To get the real experience out of this, this has to be played on some high-powered speakers, and not some kind of DMV office speakers I have.

Besides that constatation, this album gets boring quickly after the first few tracks. It's overly long, with a lot of repetitiveness to it. The only redeeming factor is how much it sooths. A nice listening experience for a cold and dark night, when you want nothing extravagant, just something to pass through the ears and kill the deafening silence.

Also, you can hear where some bands took inspiration, instrumentally. Coldplay's early ventures into the more alternative side of rock have a lot of atmosphere that can be attributed to Sigur Ros, and this album.

It's not bad but it's kinda sleep-inducing.

Never got my juices flowing. Subjectively cool though. Belongs here.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did but I’m not sure it went far enough on the same sound

It was good though, very easy listening, probably will still be back to this at some point

3.5

It certainly was a Good Beginning for me, after always being interested to hear this band, this is my first album. The vocals are sublime, the melody interesting, the use of an orchestra was like a fresh breeze. It is so well produced it is like the music is swirling in my brain. Only down point for me is because I don’t speak Icelandic, I have no idea what are the actual lyrics and at what point they are just speaking their unique blend of gibberish. One to buy.

Dit is zo consistent schitterend, echt een waanzinnig mooie plaat. Jammer dat () niet op de lijst staat, dat is stiekem mijn favoriete Sigur Ros, maar deze krijgt ook een gemakkelijke 5 sterren van me.

One of the most beautiful and unique albums ever made. Playing this in the car whilst driving the Iceland ring road is bucket list for me.

Around the time this came out, the website Audiogalaxy featured “Svefn-g-englar.” It may have been a free (legal) download. But I know that was my first exposure to this band, which has become one of my favorites and one of the best concerts I’ve attended. I probably prefer ( ) to this album, but those two are my favorites.

Peak mood

Not heard much before from this band … only really Hoppípolla. Really liked it and will be listening to more 👍

Today is probably the day that I needed the unbridled catharsis that this album provides and I am so thankful to the generator for that. This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever conceived.

10/10 [KEEP]

Woah. I want to lie in the deepest part of a ship in the pitch black on a rolling sea while this echos through the hull. Is it whales singing? Is it God?

I'm on album 396 of this project. I've had all kinds of good, bad, and mediocre. This is only the 2nd album that absolutely devastated me right out of the gate. This well now be in my 5-star regular rotation.

Honestly feel like if I listened to this enough, it could get up to a 4/5, but for now it's sitting in the middle of the pack for me.

First time I ever listened to it (Months back), it would have easily been a two. It's chill to the point of kinda being boring, but this time around it's more chill to the point of being chill (lol).

But what I'm wanting from this album is to really do something for me to hook onto really, and it's kinda defying that. Which, don't get me wrong, is to it's credit. But this album is feeling like the Icelandic Cocteau Twins, but the Cocteau Twins were laser focused and had hooks on Heaven or Los Vegas, whereas this one really doesn't.

So yeah. Very good album. Just not something I am feeling at this moment in time. I suspect if I listen to it more, it'll click more and more though.

Usually when I'm really excited about an album, I begin my review by typing out a memorable lyric. That'll be hard to do for this one. Unless I go TJUUUUUUUUUUUUU, TJUUUUUUUUUUUU

I love this Icelandic nonsense. I love how it sounds boyish and innocent, as well as massively ambitious. I love its occasionally cheesy chord progressions, as if the octet is playing on my actual heartstrings. I love the unorthodox percussion that is sometimes there and sometimes not but it is always at the perfect time. It's beautiful. It's occasionally horrific.

I love the shots of noise between songs that last just long enough to blend into the identity of the song itself. I love the loose narrative of a child being born, a new life, starting over, that can actually be applied to the band themselves making this album after a debut that kinda sucked. I love the anthemic melody of Olsen Olsen, a song which I can only assume is about Mary-Kate and Ashley. I love the title of the track afterwards, which loosely translates to "good weather for airstrikes." That's such a kickass sentence. And it fits the music! It's grand and epic like a gorgeous sunny day, but that leaves you vulnerable. It disarms you. It makes you weak.

Sigur Ros has a fantastic sound across their whole career. If this list is just about hearing albums that are good, you could put a lot of their discography on here. But realistically, Ágætis Byrjun is the only one that warrants inclusions on this list. Later on in their career, their brand of post-rock became more accessible, less experimental. That's only because this album stuck the landing. Albums like Takk... are big and beautiful, sure, but in a way they're end up being less ambitious. Because the band knew it was going to work. This album was a massive leap of faith, a hyperextension into a new realm of post-rock that is more personal, timid, quieter and yet more explosive than ever before. And it worked.

Oh yeah, and it's super Radiohead sometimes.

The Svefn-g-englar single was a perfect release - an introduction to this otherworldy band conjoring this sweeping, ambient, spacious windswept alien sounds. This album is twice as long as the 4-track single and a bit baggy - the extended strings section and trip hop adjacent stuff drag it down a bit. Also not being a first encounter with the band it's a bit less special. But even so, the highs (Viðrar vel til loftárása &
Svefn-g-englar especially) are pretty stunning: landscape painting as music - ethereal, dreamy, cathartic, spiritual, oceanic stuff.

supposedly knowing the lyrics are critical to experience this album to its fullest. it feels unfair, but im not here for a reading exercise. the music is pleasant enough. this may be what radiohead sounds like to people who dislike radiohead

I’ve always heard this band’s name, but never really indulged in their discography. It is (actually, to my surprise) right up my alley. Maybe post-rock is one of my favourite genres? Probably. I was hearing a lot of things in this one that came after 1999. Looved the spaciousness on this one and honestly, I don’t have anything bad to say about it. So it’ll go to the 5 star wall.

This album requires your full attention while simultaneously doing nothing to hold it. I definitely caught a few "hey that's kinda cool" moments throughout... and I'm sure I zoned out through a bunch more. Really tough to listen to and I honestly think it's not worth it.

Sigur Rós might be some people's idea of boring, but for me, they're as close to perfect as you can possibly get when it comes to producing weighty, dextrous and impactful post rock.

Their ability to invoke such a broad palette of eminently relatable moods through all aspects of their craft and with such a wealth of instrumentation is matched by precious few in the genre; Agætis Byrjun radiating warmth and grasping you into its embrace, whilst it often ebbs into colder, detached and more contemplative passages within the same songs. This, combined with the fascinating degree of flexibility in their songwriting approaches from track to track in terms of them generally following linear structures, but doing so in different sequences to one another to keep proceedings consistently interesting and fresh, and the mystical, yet simultaneously human element that underlines their "Hopelandic" vocal expressions, all culminates in a truly wonderful listening experience.

Absolutely no doubt in my mind, this is a five star album.

very nice and calming. helped me chill out on the train to scotland. i loved the drums