The Making of ÁGAETIS BYRJUN by Sigur Rós - featuring Kjartan Sveinsson

Intro

Dan Nordheim:

You’re listening to Life of the Record. A podcast celebrating classic albums, as told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.

Sigur Rós was formed in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1994 by Jónsi Birgisson, Georg Hólm and Ágúst Gunnarsson. They released their first album, Von, in 1997. In 1998, Kjartan Sveinsson joined the band on keyboards and guitar and provided the integral arrangements for strings, brass, choir and orchestra. Their breakthrough record, Ágætis byrjun, was released in 1999.

In this episode, Kjartan Sveinsson talks through the making of Ágætis byrjun on its 20th Anniversary.

Kjartan Sveinsson:

There was more about describing the feel of a song, we used to work a lot like that back then. Rather than being conceptual and say something important, it was more about what the song was telling us to do.

To me at least it was always like being underwater, like in a swimming pool, you dive to the bottom and you might just sit there and relax your body. You’re floating in space kind of. Well not space of course, it’s water. And that idea came to be like being in the womb, like being a fetus or something like that. 

"Svefn-g-englar"

It’s a song that we never got bored of, everyone enjoyed playing it. We wrote that in a rehearsal space, in a basement there. I think it was probably Georg who came up with the three chord riff. The lyrics in “Svefn-g-englar” were all co-written, we used to do that quite a lot back then. Though Jónsi always has the last say about the lyrics of course because he has to sing it.

It was called the submarine song at the start because my organ that I was using then, I was plugging it through an amplifier and the frequency aspect of the amplifier and the organ was all wrong. The high ‘E’ that I play there came out like a radar, like a submarine radar sound. Which then when you plugged into another amplifier or into a proper sound system, then of course it wouldn’t sound like that, but because it was plugged into this shitty amplifier, it made this submarine type of radar sound. So we wanted to recreate that. To start, that sound was also on the beat but we put it on the second beat rather than the first beat of the bar. 

"Starálfur"

“Starálfur” is one of the songs that was not made with everyone sitting together and playing instruments. The original idea was just two chords and then this melody, the string melody at the start was around for a while. We actually started out just doing the string arrangements for that song and we started recording that and everything else came later. The vocal line, the piano and everything but we had faith in the idea. I think it was actually Georg who played it on synth or something, the original thing. Georg is always very good with his riffs (laughs).

Yeah we got the string players in and that was a very strange experience (laughs). Getting these professionals, and we were just over twenty and it was all kind of awkward and we had this really bad notation software that we were using. And we couldn’t print out of it, it was a locked format on a PC, which belonged to my parents. Somebody knew someone who had some notation software and we could save midi files and he could send it over to us and we could print one copy it was all under the RAM. And when we came to the studio, the players had all been waiting and had been waiting an hour and were really annoyed. Of course we had eight players not four so we had to photocopy all of the sheet music and we didn’t have a photocopier so we used a fax machine, which was in the office of the studio (laughs).

And then, it was difficult to fill in the gaps. The idea was nice. My piano came late in the process and then doing some sort of a beat. We did that on a Nord keyboard, there’s a Moog there as well. And then we have the backward strings in the end of course, we were always playing around with this music software that we had it was called Soundscape. It was a PC software and you could actually move the cursor of the software with the mouse button. So we were always playing around with that. We felt “Starálfur” was a bit too slow as well, so we sped it up on the tape machine, up a half note. So it is actually faster than it should be and Jónsi’s voice sounds a little bit more childlike or younger when it’s sped up like that.

When we were doing the rhythm track for “Starálfur” because no drums, we also recorded just a fist to the ground and we ripped from grass as well which is also a rhythmical effect on the song. Using an old Coles microphone like the commentators use on the BBC. This strange mic which has this thing that you put in your upper lip. We used that mic quite a lot and that’s also the microphone Jónsi sings into. 

"Flugufrelsarinn"

I think “Flugufrelsarinn” was one of the first songs we wrote for the album. We had loads of songs. It was so easy for us to write back then. It was the first recording I made on the album, we recorded the harmonium organ in a church by the Valur football grounds, there’s this chapel there. And they had a harmonium there which we recorded to probably our ADAT system there and recorded it. 

The lyrics are a childhood memory from Ágúst, the drummer. He was remembering when he was a kid in the country and he was saving flies that were drowning in the street and we thought it was a nice idea. This song we we never play it live, I think we played it maybe two or three times live after Gústi left the band. We never played “Flugufrelsarinn” maybe because it was kind of a hit in Iceland, everyone expected us to play it (laughs). But I think it was also out of respect for Ágúst maybe. But anyway, we just never played that song. It was never discussed, it was never talked about why. We probably couldn’t have explained it then, hard to explain it now. Back then, we probably would’ve said it was just boring or something (laughs).

"Ný batterí"

“Ný batterí” was also a song that was written early in the process of making Ágætis byrjun. Probably a couple years before or something. It was funny, I was looking at the reel sheets from the studio. Twenty four track double inch reels, you know tapes. We used to call it “Stina.” Jónsi had been listening to Stina Nordenstam, the Swedish singer a lot and was inspired by her vocal technique. We kind of named it after Stina Nordenstam. We got Sammi and Snorri, the brass players to play on the song. We didn’t know them, and they did a wonderful job of not really playing any notes and just making airy breathing sounds. 

The speed of the song is actually in three steps. Because Ágúst was always inclined to speed up the song because it’s natural when you play hard, you want more speed and we were always really for that kind of playing. Of course we were using click track but it was just so difficult to follow it so we had three steps in the song. It was just faster and fastest (laughs). These go to eleven. It was kind of fun recording the drums on that because the drums were also recorded in three spaces. A bigger hall for the end when it’s really powerful so we’re using more of the ambiance of the rooms and adding reverb or something afterwards. 

There are some machines in the songs as well. There is a saw, this huge saw in Jónsi’s father’s smithy, which you can hear towards the end of the song and there’s also a printing machine from Ágúst the drummer was working, he was working as a printer. At least he studied printing. We all had day jobs. Jónsi was working as a smithy, his father’s smithy. Georg was working at a TV station and I was a kindergarten teacher so I would show up at eight, you know breakfast for the kids after mixing during the night. We did mix the album at least two times, even three times because we couldn’t spend our time in Syrland because it was too expensive. A lot of the recordings were made during the night. We got night time, it was just really cheap (laughs). We were just young, it was no problem for us. When you think about, how could Ken actually do it, he was much older than us (laughs). Ken Thomas was I don’t know how old he was back then, maybe forty five or something. Some people sometimes slept on the couch in the studio. It was probably a bit straining but it was just so much fun doing this so doing night hours was like “whatever.” We can do night hours or day hours, it doesn’t matter. 

"Hjartað hamast (bamm bamm bamm)"

“Hjartað hamast” in retrospect is kind of a bastard on the album, I think. It’s very often there’s one song that you kind of “ah maybe we should’ve not had it on the album.” It’s actually a very old idea, yeah one of the first songs that the band did. There’s a recording of it from ‘95, they got me to play piano on it. Yeah I wasn’t in the band in ‘95. That’s probably the song we spent the most time on trying to get it right. Some people really like that song. I don’t mind, I’m not saying it’s really bad but it was a lot of work to make it into something. 

I think we recorded the vocals four times or something on that. Jónsi was never happy. We got our friend KK, who was a musician in Iceland. We had a studio together, me Jónsi and KK and another friend of ours. We got him to play harmonica on the song. It was really quite good. 

We had a Rhodes piano there, which is chopped up in hundreds of little pieces. Yeah there was loads of producing going on for that song. There was a new SSL desk in Sryland, which was the first proper desk in Iceland. And then Gúst got us on SSL a few months later but you had never heard sound like that in Iceland. You’d have to go to London or something like that to record. It was just so amazing to be able to have good sound for a little band in Iceland. Everyone was always working with this shit equipment. So that was so much fun recording and just hearing it back, it was like “wow, it’s so amazing.”

"Viðrar vel til loftárása"

“Viðrar vel til loftárása” that’s an odd one also on the album. It was just an idea that we had in our rehearsal space. A lot of these songs are actually written there in this basement with no windows. Which was maybe good, you could concentrate. There was something about that idea but it wasn’t working with us four just playing it. It was never a song really, it was just an idea and so it was all based on arranging it for strings and doing something kind of grand if you will for that song. Yeah I think it was me and Jónsi probably who sat down and just did the arrangement, pen and paper, and wrote down the structure of the song and then we recorded it always presuming this and that would be in the songs, like the strings and all of that stuff. 

It was all recorded on tape and tape was expensive and only fifteen minutes long. So that meant maximum two songs per tape. So that’s a lot of tape, which we couldn’t afford. And also the album is I think 72 minutes long so it just fits on a CD. Yeah so there was no space left on the tape but “Viðrar” is a bit longer song so it was difficult to fit a shorter song after that, there was not enough time. Because all the songs were kind of long so we did record that song again and that’s the only extra take of a song. So all of the other songs, we would just record over what we had. We would never go back to the other take. That was never an option. So it was always about, just get the take, which is great (laughs). So it was a lot of concentration, loads of concentration to get it right. 

The name “Viðrar vel til loftárása” was something Jónsi heard on the news. I don’t remember exactly what it was, I think I misunderstood it myself at some point. But it was something to do with war. NATO doing airstrikes and stuff like that. Somebody said that on the radio, meaning it was a clear sky. Good weather for airstrikes. 

“Olsen Olsen”

Yeah “Olsen Olsen” we had Sammi and Snorri again playing with us, the string section and yeah. It’s a happy song, not a party song I suppose, but it’s a celebration. I think the original riff is definitely Georg again (laughs), the riff master Georg. And I think it’s based actually on playing around with a Nirvana song. There’s a bass line in a Nirvana song that kind of starts very...You know people will know what I’m talking about I think. There’s a certain Nirvana song. (Hums the bass riff from “Come As You Are”). So the two riffs come from there. 

It doesn’t have any lyrics. It’s one of the songs where Jónsi uses his Hopelandic thing, as it has been known as Hopelandic, which is just his jiberish. We also based the lyrics sometimes around Jónsi’s jiberish. So we would maybe hear words out of that and there would maybe be a word to inspire it to something else. So we used that quite a lot for lyrics. 

“Olsen Olsen” was a song that the three of them wrote in Denmark together. It was before I joined the band. And I think it was ‘96, they went to Denmark in an old converted Citroën ambulance. 

Packed their gear and drove off to Denmark to Roskilde. Hit the ferry and yeah. Long hair, all of them, stopped by the police on the way back. You know (laughs). “Olsen Olsen” was I don’t remember exactly what it was but it was some joke about the policeman who looked strange or something, I’m not sure. Then later I did my bit, which is the flute part and the piano part in the song and that’s probably the oldest song on the album. 

“Ágætis byrjun"

“Ágætis byrjun” was also a song that I was not involved with writing in the start. I think it’s something that Jónsi brought in, which never happens with Sigur Rós, it was always cowriting stuff. The lyrics are about when the boys got their first album, Von, into their hands and went into this cafe and gave it to the clerk and asked him to play it. There was nobody in the cafe, it doesn’t matter. He was playing it there and they were sitting there eating soup and bread and listening to this album. It’s kind of about, “yeah this is great, but next time, let’s do something (laughs). Something really really really good.” Yeah it’s a good start, that’s kind of what it means. 

Sound-wise, it’s a fairly plain song. Georg is playing double bass there, there’s an acoustic guitar, piano, Rhodes, really simple. Yeah it’s really simple song. 

We do use some effects and reverbs from another recording. Another recording of “Ágætis byrjun,” which we were quite happy with but there was something about it that wasn’t working quite right. I don’t remember what it was, maybe the general sound, I’m not quite sure about it. But it wasn’t good enough so we did record it again. Which is the album version. The tempo was different so it was kind of moving effects, vocal effects and stuff and totally different speeds and all of that. So it becomes quite interesting actually as an effect on the album version. 

"Avalon"

“Avalon” is a part of “Starálfur,” which is a small segment of “Starálfur,” which is cut and slowed down. I don’t know how much, 400% or something. Yeah so it’s just that, just a part of Starálfur slowed down. There are some elements missing though. We were always doing this experimenting, slowing down, speeding up or reversing. It is actually really fun to slow down stuff. Especially stuff that you really write, like classical. Slow things down and put some reverb on it or something like that. It’s sometimes amazing. 

Íslenska Óperan

When we released Ágætis byrjun, of course we wanted to have a proper concert, release concert so we rented the Óperan, which cost 70,000 króna in 1999. Which was a lot of money (laughs). I don’t know how much it would be today but I thought it was so much. Yeah we wanted strings, we had a grand piano there, we got the radio to record it. Even though we weren’t a big band or anything. It was all very ambitious. It was a really fun concert and it was just I don’t know, sometimes concerts can be like something happens, a kind of magic. I think the audience felt it, we felt it, it was just important for us at least. And the album came out the same day. I think the Óperan concert was kind of the peak also because we produced it ourselves and it was our own show. It was how we wanted to present the show. It was full of people, all our friends and family. It was great and everything just felt so right at that time (laughs). It’s a very memorable concert for me at least, though it’s twenty years ago (laughs). 

It was really fun doing this album, you know because we were all young. I mean I was 19, 20 or something when we started recording. And you know just totally invincible and “we’re never going to die” (laughs) and “the world is ours” (laughs) kind of thing. So yeah, it was so much fun. 

Outro

Dan Nordheim:

Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Sigur Rós. You’ll also find a link to stream or purchase Ágætis byrjun, including the recent 20th Anniversary edition. Thanks for listening.

Credits: 

"Svefn-g-englar"

"Starálfur"

"Flugufrelsarinn"

"Ný batterí"

"Hjartað hamast (bamm bamm bamm)"

"Viðrar vel til loftárása"

"Olsen Olsen"  

"Ágætis byrjun"

"Avalon"

“Intro”

Words and Music by Jón Þór Birgisson, Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson, Georg Hólm, Kjartan Sveinsson

Universal Polygram Int. Publishing on Behalf of Universal Music Publishing Ltd. (ASCAP)

© 1999 Krunk / Warner Music Group

Intro/Outro Music:

“Winter Cold” by North Home

Meladdy Music (ASCAP)

Produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Mixing assistance by Nick Stargu

Mastered by Jeremy Whitwam