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Agaetis Byrjun stands up in overall artistic merit to any record ever made.
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Sigur Rós effortlessly make music that is massive, glacial, and sparse..... They are the first vital band of the 21st Century.
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Each song drifts in and out of focus like snatches of street noise on a half-awake Sunday morning - no need to get up, just lie there and listen quietly.
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As foolish as it seems to say that any music is 100 percent new, I've never heard anything like this before.
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A 72-minute haul into a cold, stirring, private space where the post-punk isolation of Joy Division is redefined and softened with mesmerizing doses of melody and romantic longing.
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At its best, the album seems to accomplish everything lagging post-shoegazers like Spiritualized or Chapterhouse once promised. However, at its worst, the album sometimes slides into an almost overkill of sonic structures
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They evoke folks as diverse as Led Zeppelin and My Bloody Valentine, but the gently woozy Sigur Ros don't sound like anything or anyone else so much as a classic-rock band bewitched by white magic.
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Agaetis Byrjun is an impressively unself-conscious record that would have been difficult to make in a trend-obsessive center like London or New York. It is sincere and though its influences may be familiar, its beauty and tenderness are refreshingly new.
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'Post-rock', which Sigur Rós most assuredly are, may be little more than the shoegazing of a decade ago in an ironic T-shirt, but that's no reason to dismiss it outright. For a start, much of it is very lovely.
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Sigur Ros's second album proper features this astonishing opener ["Svefn-G-Englar"] and 10 others which, while surprisingly diverse, each reflects their penchant for apocalyptic serenity, overdriven guitars and teenage singer Jonsi's Birgisson unique Hopelandish language.
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When the music is fully operational... the potential for greatness is obvious.
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A thematically linked work where some of the sonic landscapes were entrancing (although not warm).
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Waves of unidentifiable noise, dulcet vibraphone pulses and singer/guitarist Jonsi's ethereal singing (more like some ghostly instrument than any conventional vocal, borne out by Jonsi's fictional 'language', Hopelandish, which he often sings in) mesh to create an elegant, grand music that's equally ambient and epic.
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Ágætis Byrjun is one of the most sublimely immersive albums to come along in ages.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 198 out of 215
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Mixed: 3 out of 215
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Negative: 14 out of 215
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FanMorganJul 9, 2002
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BobRJun 29, 2007
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May 1, 2017