The ten songs on the album include some self-reference: the introduction contains backmasked parts from the title track, and the last song, "Avalon", consists of a different take of an instrumental passage from "Starálfur" slowed to around a quarter of its original speed.
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Logo on the album cover in the font ShelleyAllegro BT Sigur Rós won an Iceland Music Award and the 2001 Shortlist Music Prize for this album. The name has also been translated as "An alright start." After hearing the song, he said it was "a good beginning" the name stuck. The album's title came from a friend hearing the first song they had written for the album, which would become the title track. Ágætis byrjun represented a substantial departure from the band's previous album Von, with that album's Cocteau Twins-esque dream pop and extended ambient soundscapes replaced by Jónsi Birgisson's now signature cello-bowed guitarwork and lush orchestration (using a double string octet amongst other orchestral elements).
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Ágætis byrjun was recorded between the summer of 1998 to the spring of 1999 with producer Ken Thomas, and became Sigur Rós's breakthrough album, both critically and commercially. "Olsen Olsen" finds the singer's angelic wails reverberating from one peak to another until the sound rattles in the dell, where the folkspeople celebrate with triumphant marching flute and sing along, reveling in the extraordinary masterpiece that is Ágætis Byrjun.Ágætis byrjun (Icelandic pronunciation: ow-gy-tiss bi-ar-yun, A good beginning ) is the second album by the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, which was released in 1999. Birgisson's quivering voice on "Flugufrelsarinn" conveys the torture of the dark Icelandic winter. Once they do, it becomes clear that at the heart of the polar grandeur there are unbelievably affecting songs that come across loud and clear in any language. The snow-capped majesty of Ágætis Byrjun, augmented by bowed strings, the static crackle of falling snowdrifts, and other ethereal rumbles, is the most immediately striking element of Sigur Rós, as Birgisson's woozy operatic vocals take a while to sink in. In two years, Ágætis Byrjun has become the barometer with which all music is compared in their native Iceland and inspired new levels of hyperbolic journalism worldwide, leading up to this re-release on PIAS America in conjunction with MCA. The sound of "God weeping tears of gold in heaven," Melody Maker tells us.
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From the Great White North of Iceland they come, spreading their painfully exquisite message in a mixture of Icelandic and singer Jón Thór Birgisson's private "Hopelandish" language. Sigur Rós isn't the end of any era, but it may be the flourishing of a new one - a new beacon in the marriage of raw human emotion and sublime layers of aural wallpaper until now commissioned so effectively by Radiohead. Sigur Rós Ágætis Byrjun (PIAS) They appeared suddenly, like the comet from the heavens that in ancient times marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.