For years - I mean literally since I've known him (10
years now) - Jonsi has been beavering away in his kitchen, bedroom or
living room making music extra-curricular to Sigur Ros. To be honest
we'd kind of gotten used to these being drawing board propositions
only - the ambient album, the electronic album, the pop album, the
acoustic album, etc. It's not that we didn't doubt his work ethic;
these things certainly existed, it's just that they seemed more
conceptual than real; creation to sate Jonsi's enormous energy rather
than anything we'd ever have to put on a release schedule. But then
last year he went and finished 'Riceboy Sleeps', an album that had
existed as a soundtrack to his and Alex Somer's artwork far in
advance of being an actual record. And then he started on about the *acoustic*
album and bounced straight off the back of 'Med sud i eyrum...' into
the studio (alright, apartment) with Icelander-by-proxy Nico Muhly.
It seemed apparent to us that it would be missing a
trick to limit a bona fide Jonsi solo album to being a small scale
acoustic project, so some subtle cajoling and encouragement to reach
beyond his comfort zone was the order of the day. we shot the breeze
about producers and Peter Katis's name came up off the back of his
work with Fanfarlo and The National. Jonsi weighed in with drummer
Samuli from Mum, who he'd heard playing with Alex in Nordic art
supergroup Kira Kira. Suddenly the *acoustic* record wasn't looking
so acoustic after all. From then on it's been a slow and ineluctable
slide towards the full-on, barely contained, glorious mayhem soon to
be available on 'Go'.
Everything about this record has a seat of the pants
feel about it, its wildly shifted focus, the way nothing (including
the album itself) had a title til about an hour before the news hit
the blogs; the fact that as I type I still have no idea what is going
to be on the cover; or that, even though Jonsi is currently on a
plane to New York to master the record we've no clear idea of what
order the songs are going to appear in, or even, in some cases, which
versions of songs are going to be used. It's edge of the seat, it's
exciting, it's infectious. I think we are beginning to sense that
maybe Jonsi has created something super special here. More than that
in fact, I think he has created something really special here. I'm
not sure I've felt this excited about a project since the time I
first heard Agaetis Byrjun, right back in 1999. Holy fuck. Are you
ready?.
- John Best, manager, 7 December 2009.
Full press release on sigur-ros.co.uk
