MEð SUð Í EYRUM VIð SPILUM ENDALAUST

Working quickly with producer Flood (U2, Nick Cave, New Order), Sigur Rós use more varied instrumentation and snappier song structures to make their most immediate and playful record. HÓLM: I remember deciding that we wanted to do it fast: just write the music, go in and record it. Sometimes I think that might have been a mistake, but it’s interesting to do experiments like that. We rented this house in Snaefellsnes, near Reykjavík, for 10 days. We brought a lot of equipment, and in the evening we’d cook dinner and just play music. SVEINSSON: We went to this house in the countryside and wrote most of it in a week or so. It was always really easy to write songs for Sigur Rós. Other things have been difficult, but writing was never a problem. We wanted to challenge ourselves, change the sound, get rid of the big reverbs – which we didn’t, of course! The initial thought was to strip it down, maybe focus more on the songwriting rather than the soundscape. JÓNSI: We wrote, recorded, released and toured this record all within 2008. November 2008 was the last time Kjartan played live with the band, and knowing that was coming was behind the timing. We went to New York and recorded all the songs in 12 days. Flood was great, especially working under such time constraints. We’re terrible tinkerers and as with all our previous albums we’d never have finished it on schedule without him. That said, I think we wore him out with our lack of trust, somewhat.

HÓLM: It has really good songs, but I always think of the album as being just a little too rushed.