VON

Encouraged by the Smekkleysa [Bad Taste] collective, which includes former members of the Sugarcubes, Sigur Rós piece together their long, ambitious, somewhat embryonic debut. GEORG HÓLM: We recorded Von over the year of 1995. The guy who owned the studio became a good friend of ours; we were always hanging around. He loved the band, so he wasn’t counting the hours. He needed to paint his house, so [payment] was a crate of beer here and a couple of days painting there! We worked in the evenings, and we’d just mess around in a fun, creative way, exploring sounds. Sometimes we just destroyed everything with effects. “Hafssól” doesn’t sound anything like what we played, or how we’ve played it since. We put this reverb effect over the whole song. JÓNSI BIRGISSON: When we thought we’d mostly finished the record we discovered a particular reverb that we poured over the entire album, which gives it its own peculiar feel. I was very uncertain about my voice, and that’s reflected in the fact that the vocal is completely buried in the mix. We didn’t know what we were doing, really. The bands we liked at the time were mainly British – My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Spiritualized – as well as US bands like Smashing Pumpkins, with a smattering of metal. But when we attempted to make our own music it just came out different – like, really different. Von is like a time capsule of us then. HÓLM: We sold about 40 copies. I remember going to our local café and asking the guys there if they’d put the record on, and with every song we got more depressed, because we thought it basically sounded like shit. We hated it! The lyrics to the song “Ágaetis Byrjun” are actually about that day. JÓNSI: It was pretty demoralising. We took it off and walked round town, promising that next time we would do better.