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Aka ‘the brackets album’, recorded at their homemade studio, Sundlaugin, located by the Álafoss waterfall in the town of Mosfellsbaer. An intense mood piece, featuring string quartet amiina, new drummer Orri, and several songs in Hopelandic. HÓLM: We signed a record deal and spent all the money buying a cheap building and second-hand equipment, and building our own studio. JÓNSI: Having a studio went hand in hand with being separate from the music industry and standing on our own. The attention we’d got [after Ágaetis Byrjun] was sudden and unexpected, and made us protective of one another. It helped solidify a sense of us against the world – no bad thing in a band in its early stages. In practice it was difficult, because we had to make a studio in a swimming pool, with all the technical challenges that poses. HÓLM: It was one of the hardest records we’ve ever done. We were touring all over the world, and during soundcheck we’d start writing new songs. In some ways, we were already touring the brackets album before it was recorded. When we finally got to the studio, we wanted to do it as live as possible, but we were never happy with the results. We probably recorded that album three times over. It never felt right. SVEINSSON: Hopelandic wasn’t actually a made-up language. It was just laziness, really! HÓLM: Jónsi had been singing these songs for a couple of years, and we’d never written lyrics for them. He was just babbling. We tried to write lyrics, and then we thought, why are we trying to add something and trying to change it? It sounded great as it was. JÓNSI: It was never the idea of singing this gobbledygook language to acquire any special significance. It was really just a way of avoiding being pinned down to having to write words and then having those words tied to meaning. There was no concept to the album as a whole. The brackets signify nothing, just a void on which to project your own meaning. We play a bunch of songs from the record still.