about ágætis byrjun credits & tracklisting memories recording ágætis byrjun album artwork ágætis media svefn-g-englar video viðrar vel til loftárása video press reviews competition buy album now
song manipulationhave you ever tried tinkering with songs from ágætis byrjun?
ágætis byrjun manipulations by sigur rós
samples from premastered versionbelow are some samples from an early mastering of ágætis byrjun - this version is almost identical to what was eventually released with a few exceptions.. the album opened with the song "ágætis byrjun" instead of it being the penultimate song. as you can hear below, the transitions and endings of some of the songs are a little different to how they are in the final version.
ágætis byrjun demos by sigur rós
1999 demothis demo from early 1999 contains a demo version of svefn-g-englar and early live version of ný batterí and flugufrelsarinn from 1998.
svefn-g-englar 1998 demo by sigur rós
photos from ágætis byrjun era
images from 1998/1999 around the time of ágætis byrjun being recorded/released.
"ný batterí" from the film "popp í reykjavík" (1998)(problems? view this video on vimeo)
"the next album is going to be so much better"
one year before the release of ágætis
byrjun, the band were interviewed for an icelandic documentary called
popp í reykjavík (pop in reykjavik). it is a film about
the vibrant icelandic music culture of the late '90s and
features interviews and concert footage of promising icelandic bands like gusgus,
bellatrix, maus, ensími, quarashi, botnleðja as well as sigur rós.
the band's line up at the time of filming was jónsi, kjartan, goggi and águst.
the above clip, subtitled in english, is an extract from the movie - the song ends abruptly before shifting to a piece about damon albarn. some stills from the video are available here.
nýja lagið at the icelandic opera house (june 12th 1999)(problems? view this video on vimeo)
to celebrate the release of ágætis byrjun, there was a concert at the icelandic opera house on the 12th of june 1999. this recording of the song was released as a bside on the svefn-g-englar ep in late 1999. the song, nýja lagið (new song), only exists in live recordings.
this concert was the last time that águst performed with the band.
icelandic music awards (2000)(problems? view this video on vimeo)
in the icelandic music awards in 2000, jónsi won the "best songwriter" category- in this video he can be seen winning and accepting the prize - after the award ceremony clip there is an interview with kjartan and orri with snippets of "nýja lagið". (the entire clip is in icelandic)
ágætis byrjun from "heima" (2007)(problems? view this video on vimeo)
taken from the heima dvd - recorded in 2007 in the town of vík í mýrdal, the song ágætis byrjun entered the bands setlists again during the promotion tour for "heima".
