Email: alisongrist@tiscali.co.uk Call: +44 (0)7940 59 00 70

September 2008: When I heard that the ethereal, post-rock band Sigur Rós was headlining the Latitude Festival in June, it didn’t surprise me. What did was the fact that they’d actually recorded their first-ever song in English (‘All alright’) for their new album. And then it didn’t surprise me again when I listened to that song to realise you can’t make out the lyrics anyway. That’s Sigur Rós, a band made up of four Icelandic musicians who simply do their own thing. They are usually reticent in the press and generally avoid TV intrusion altogether.

But Sigur Rós is the most successful band in Iceland whose fan base around the world is a growing force which includes British bands like Radiohead and Hollywood stars such as Tom Cruise.
 
And this time last year I flew to Reykjavik in order to film them for BBC Two’s The Culture Show. Their sublime concert film, “Heima” (Homeland), was just about to have its international premiere and they’d provisionally agreed to their first-ever substantial TV interview.

My Presenter, Verity Sharp, cameraman Patrick Acum and I joined them for dinner at their favourite restaurant. We helped them drink their favourite, obscure cocktails followed by champagne while they checked us out prior to filming. When they asked us to indulge in a little putrified shark, we obliged. It’s disgusting. The bill was enormous, EMI paid.

So they must have thought we were agreeable because the next day we drove to their studio a little outside Reykjavik for our time with them. The studio sits anonymously by a pond, a few rare trees and bushes blending it’s greyness against the force of Iceland’s turbulent weather. It’s a former municipal swimming pool. The upper level houses the recording facilities and where the bottom of the pool would have been is where they play their instruments. They also make up their songs here. They just jam together and a song usually comes out with no preconceived arrangements or lyrics.

We interviewed lead singer, Jonsi Birgisson, and bassist, Georg Hólm, separately. Then we recorded a special acoustic version of Njósnavélin. It just felt right to keep the direction simple and pure to go with the pace and tone and definitive feel of the band here. Patrick took on the tracking shots and I’d hired two Icelandic camera men for the day and they picked up individual and wider geography shots.