The band was Sigur Rs and the record gtis byrjun, and to mark its 20 th birthday this June, the band will release a. Stream songs including Intro, Svefn-G-Englar and more. Twenty years ago a band came out of seemingly nowhere to deliver a record that filled a deep-seated need listeners didn’t even know they had (Pitchfork Best Albums of the 00s). Even if you can’t understand what he’s saying, his vulnerable voice has the uncanny power to tap into your most repressed emotions and deep-seated bittersweet memories. Listen to Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós on Apple Music. But for all of his band’s grandiose gestures, Jónsi Birgisson's crystalline, androgynous coo turns Ágætis Byrjun into an intensely intimate experience. Ágætis Byrjun delivers one weighty moment after another: sonar-pinged arias that gradually accrue enough force to shift tectonic plates (“Svefn-F-Englar”) meditative piano ballads that erupt into shrieking symphonic psychedelia ("Viðrar vel til loftárása") choral sing-alongs that sound like Christmas in heaven (“Olsen Olsen”). In this case, it proved that a neoclassical, shoegazing post-rock band specializing in glacially paced 10-minute movements sung in a made-up, indecipherable dialect could attract a mass audience and become one of the most influential alt-rock groups of their generation. Sigur Rós’ second record-their first to be widely heard outside their native Iceland-is one of those epochal, game-changing albums that redefined what is possible in rock music. Earlier this year, Sigur Rs announced an expanded box set reissue of their 1999 LP gtis byrjun.Today, to mark that record's 16th anniversary, they'll audio-stream its release-day show at the.