People in Iceland are different. That's the only explanation for how this wonderful but extremely challenging and uncommercial record has been top of the charts in Reykjavik for weeks. Sigur Ros look like your average indie band but they specialise in a particularly icy form of space-rock that's a million miles away from Britpop. Most of this album is composed of epic ambient soundscapes with added atmosphere provided by ghostly singing in a fictional language. Austere and beautiful, this is church music for the new millennium.
