It has made its way to a copious number of soundtracks, including the 2001 Tom Cruise hit, ‘Vanilla Sky’. One of the first few tracks on the album, ‘Svefn-g-englar’ (Icelandic for ‘Sleepwalking Angels’), is also one of their most celebrated songs. The song is exclusively written in ‘Vonlenksa’ or ‘Hopelandish’, a gibberish language often used by Jónsi, which lacks syntax, grammar, and even meaning. While most of the songs on the album are written in Icelandic, ‘Olsen-Olsen’ is an exception. With this album, the band proved to the world of music that stuff can be two things- a violin bow can double as a guitar pick! Calm, soothing, and with a voice like none other, Jónsi’s unparalleled vocals set a hypnotic mood for the entire album, with Sigur Rós dexterously managing to incorporate vocals as a standout instrument by themselves.
This was the last album that saw the works of their drummer, Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson, who left soon after the album’s release. Their second album, Ágætis byrjun ( A Good Beginning), was released mid-1999. They also received critical acclaim for integrating bowed guitar into their music, an earmark that set them apart from other artists in Iceland as well. Their songs are an amalgamation of obscure musical instruments, notwithstanding the traditional piano, flute, tremolo, and the occasional violin and cello. The band soon shot to fame because of Jónsi’s soothing falsetto vocals and, more importantly, the incorporation of nuances of post, progressive, and ambient rock into their music. Although the phrase ‘Victory Rose’ doesn’t add up grammatically, the band’s name is, in fact, a wordplay on Jónsi’s then-infant sister, Sigurros.
The words ‘Sigur’ and ‘Rós’, in Icelandic, mean ‘Victory’ and ‘Rose’ respectively. The band is currently a trio consisting of Birgisson, Hólm, and Orri Páll Dýrason, who joined in 1999. Founded in 1994 by Jón Þór “Jónsi” Birgisson, Georg “Goggi” Hólm, and Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson, Sigur Rós is an Icelandic post-rock band from Reykjavik.