Sigur Rós

( ) Single

Sigur Ros release the first single from their globally acclaimed ‘( )’ album on April 21. The release is the opening untitled track from an album of nameless songs, and here comes in three formats, including a DVD featuring the song’s controversial new video.

Also to be found are 12 minutes of the band’s first newly recorded music since

‘( )’ was finished last Summer. Obstensibly a remix of the A-side - although you’d be hard pushed to guess - the ambient and drifting chorus of sampled and real vocals over lush and other-worldly keyboards has recently been found closing the band’s phenomenal live set (“Truly,no band in the world can touch them” NME live review Mar 03). Here it is split into three distinct sections identified only as a, b and c.

The video has been directed by Floria Sisgismondi (Marilyn Manson, Tricky), and is the band’s third provocative visual accompaniment in a row. Previous award-winning efforts have involved the Down’s Syndrome theatre group Perlan dancing and kissing to ‘Svefn-G-Englar’, and a pre-pubescent homosexual awakening for ‘Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa’. Arguably the most powerful yet, the new work sees schoolchildren experiencing a Lord of the Flies-style breakdown as they play in an unexplained dystopian vision of the future, which, with its black snow and hellish red sky, some people are interpreting as nuclear winter.