Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson & Sigur Rós

HILMAR ORM HILMARSSON
Hilmarsson, who with over 20 soundtracks to his name is Iceland's most prolific film composer. In 1995 he won European Film Composer of the Year for his work on the Oscar nominated 'Children of Nature', for which he also collaborated with Fridriksson and 'Angels of the Universe' writer, Einar Mar Gudmundsson.

Here his work is given almost unbearable poignancy by the knowledge that not only is the movie's doomed protagonist the writer's real life brother, but also a personal friend of Hilmarsson. His Soundtrack to 'Childeren of Nature' has been released on Touch.

SIGUR RÓS
Formed in January, 1994, Sigur Rós are an Icelandic four-piece band who have rapidly shot to international success. Although until the release of the single 'Svefn-G-Englar' on FatCat in 1999, the band had remained unreleased outside of their native country, they had previously released 3 albums in Iceland (all on the Smekkleysa label) - 'Von', their debut in 1997; a remix, 'Vonbrig', a year later; and in 1999, the awesome new 'Agítis Byrjun', which was re-released on FatCat, and was voted as Iceland's 'album of the century'.

A second FatCat 12" arrived in the shape of 'Ny Batterï' in 2000, including two tracks which featured in the soundtrack of the deeply-moving 'Angels Of The Universe' (released by FatCat in autumn 2001), a movie from Oscar-nominated Icelandic film director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson.

In 2000, we released their album, 'Ágïtis Byrjun' which was recorded at Reykjavik's Studio Sasyrland with engineer Ken Thomas, and has gone on to garner widespread popular and critical acclaim. As a live entity, Sigur Rós have completed sell-out tours throughout Europe, the USA and beyond (including tours with Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Labradford, and Radiohead).

In 2002, they won the inaugural Virgin Shortlist Prize for Artistic Achievement (beating off the likes of PJ Harvey, Gorillaz, and the Dandy Warhols), and had 3 tracks included in Cameron Crowe�s film, �Vanilla Sky�.

The release of their most recent album, '( )' recorded in their new studio in Reykjavik (again with Ken Thomas), was met with almost over whelming critical acclaim. 2003 has seen the band play some of the major summer Europen festivals, including Glastonbury and Roskilde aswell as collaborating with Radiohead for Merce Cunningham's exclusive 'split series' project. Their video made for the single 'Untitled #1' by acclaimed director Floria Sigismundi recently won them best video at the European MTV music video awards.

( ) has recently earned Sigur Ros a double Grammy nomination for best alternative album and for best album artwork.