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 interview with sigur rós

Having recently moved to Shetland to find myself as the entertainments editor of a new monthly newspaper, (The Shetland Post) I felt that Sigur Ros, with an impending album and a heavy tour schedule, would be an ideal subject for the paper's first interview. Their bassist Georg was only to happy to chat with me and what follows is our conversation presented exclusively in full. (a more newspaper friendly version will feature in debut issue of The Shetland Post, due in the last week of August.)

Re:mote Induction : Has the band always comprised of the current four members?

Georg: No. It started off me, Jonsi, the singer and another drummer and we did one album together and then ..., the keyboard player, he joined us, then we did a remix album of the first one and when the last one came out the drummer quit so we have a new drummer now.

Re:mote Induction : So, including the remix album you have to date released 3 albums in total?

Georg: Yes.

Re:mote Induction : Has your music developed much over the albums?

Georg: Yes it's developed a lot, it's getting better ha ha, I think when people develop themselves the music they do develops with them. Growing up in a way.

Re:mote Induction : How would you describe the tone of your music?

Georg: I don't know, it's difficult really, it's difficult to describe your own music, probably more difficult for me to describe than anyone else, I would hope that it would just be sincere, that the only way I would like to describe it.

Re:mote Induction : Do you have any conscious expectation of your music, as you write it, have you any intention to create a certain mood?

Georg: yes and no. All of our music just comes out and we never plan for anything special to happen but we alway want to make it so that people will feel something when they hear it, to open up some flood gate.

Re:mote Induction : How important do you feel the lyrics are in the communication of your songs?

Georg: I don't think they are that important actually, I don't think they are important at all.

Re:mote Induction : Am I correct in understanding you use a combination of Icelandic and a made up language?

Georg: Yes.

Re:mote Induction : Could you tell me a bit about that?

Georg: On the first album, when we wrote the songs for that, Jonsi used to sing just babble, and when we did the album, we wrote lyrics for all the songs except one where we just decided Jonsi would sing all his babble, that album was called Hope, and that song was called Hope and so we decided to call it Hopelandish, and now for example, all our new songs are just in that language.

Re:mote Induction : Babble for texture?

Georg: It's just using the voice as an instrument.

Re:mote Induction : You've been around a while; had you done much touring outside Iceland prior to signing with Fatcat?

Georg: No not really, last year was the first time we've ever played outside Iceland.

Re:mote Induction : You've been doing a lot of touring, are you enjoying it?

Georg: Up to an extent. It is good to get all over the place, see things like, in two weeks we're going to Japan which will be really exciting, but I think it's also very difficult, it's really hard on your head, it's exhausting, we don't want to do too much of it 'cos we don't want to burn out.

Re:mote Induction : Do you feel it's quite important at the moment?

Georg: yeah, yeah it must be. This is how people tend to hear our music.

Re:mote Induction : How has it been touring with Godspeed... and Labradford and so on?

Georg: The Godspeed... tour was difficult, very difficult. First of all it was our first real tour and also Godspeed... are a lot of people and every time we went to places to play, their sound checks dragged on for a long time, so we never really got any sound checks, but that not their fault, and so it was a bit difficult in that sense. The Drifting tour was excellent, we enjoyed that very much, really good, everything was just... perfect.

Re:mote Induction : Do you think your environment influences your music?

Georg: Yeah, I think so. We've been asked that question before and every time we've been asked that we've been like, 'no not really', but then when we started to think about it I think it really does, and the more I think about it I think it's true, I think the nature of the environment in Iceland really affects our music. When you seriously think about it if we'd lived in London or somewhere we'd probably not be writing the same music.

Re:mote Induction : What element of Iceland do you think has the most bearing on who you are and your music?

Georg: I think it must be the landscapes. When I play live for example I always see pictures in my head and those pictures are of Icelandic landscapes very often and.. stories in the landscape. The landscape is really soft but can then become really hard and you can see both at the same time like moss and lava which are, you know, extremes.

Re:mote Induction : Could you tell me about the nursery rhyme you did a version of on your last Fat Cat 12"?

Georg: That song I believe is originally an Irish lullaby but I don't know if anybody knows it in Ireland now, 'cos it's a lullaby you sing for children in Iceland and everybody's done that for a long time.

Re:mote Induction : You also feature a brass band on your last 12".

Georg: When we did our new album (out 14 August) we wanted to get some more musicians in, like strings and brass and everything.

Re:mote Induction : How is the music scene in Reykavik?

Georg: There are a lot of bands in Reykavik and I think, it's such a small country as well, that every body gets to know each other and become friends... or enemies.

Re:mote Induction : With the new album, is there a sense of starting over?

Georg: Yes and no, the album is called a good beginning, a good start, and I think we feel like we're starting over but in a good way, we like to start over. Before was a beginning; now it really starts.

Re:mote Induction : When you write do you work towards an album and break or do you constantly write?

Georg: Well we always work backwards really. We play songs first live and then go into the studio and record them. Before we tour of course we rehearse and write songs and then we play them to polish them. We usually take a break but it's a bit difficult now with so much going on.

Re:mote Induction : Do you think the presure will be on for some time to come?

Georg: Yes. but I think if we want to take a break we'll just take a break.

Re:mote Induction : How did you become involved with Fat Cat?

Georg: We were playing a gig in Iceland with Gus Gus, as a warm up band and the Fatcat guys were there and they spoke to us after the gig and they were really into it and wanted to release maybe a single or something and it just evolved from there. We had been hoping for something to happen but weren't really searching and this came along and we said yeah, we'd got offers from other companies but they weren't right but this was the right thing to do, it's what we wanted to do.

Re:mote Induction : Will Fatcat be re-releasing your earlier albums?

Georg: I don't think we want to, I think we want to progress as we are and we'll see in a few years if we want to.

Re:mote Induction : and the fatcat ep's, collected on to an album?

Georg: on our new album.