Frakkur - 2000 - 2004 (3LP)

Frakkur has always felt like a whisper between Sigur Rós diehards, the secret alias where Jónsi stashed his early 2000s electronic sketches while his day job was busy reshaping post-rock. Frakkur - 2000 - 2004 finally gave those whispers a proper home when it arrived as an official release for Record Store Day Black Friday 2019 on Krúnk, collecting music Jónsi made across those years and salvaged from old minidiscs and hard drives. The result is a time capsule with a pulse, a set that reveals how playful and curious he was when no one was watching.

If you come to this expecting bowed guitars and cathedral-sized crescendos, recalibrate. These pieces dance closer to the Icelandic glitch-pop of the era, kin to the childlike clatter of múm or the soft-focus rhythms that early Four Tet loved. You hear tiny beats stitched together like paper cutouts, synths that wobble instead of roar, and loops that feel found rather than engineered. The charm lives in those textures. A rhythm will sputter into life, stumble, then land in a groove so gentle it feels like it arrived by accident. Jónsi’s melodic sense is still unmistakable, just reframed, with nursery-bright motifs peeking through the hiss and grit.

What sets this apart from a drawer full of demos is how finished so much of it feels. The opening passages on the first platter glow with patient momentum, a throb of bass and sleepy hi-hats under a simple figure that keeps shifting hue. Later, a short ambient piece drifts in like a Reykjavik winter morning, all frost and faint light, before a more percussive track clicks back in with toy-box bells that snap against a warm low end. He toys with tempo, lets loops overlap, then trims them back until only the good bits remain. Every so often, a stray acoustic strum or a fragment of voice surfaces, a reminder of the singer hiding in the circuitry.

The lo-fi edges are part of the character. Pulling this music off minidisc gives it a soft blur, a little wow and flutter that moves like breath under the pads. Rather than fight that, the sequencing leans into it. Side breaks arrive right when your brain needs them, not where a streaming playlist would insist, and the flow across the set feels considered. On vinyl, these pieces open up. The low frequencies are warm but not swampy, the hand-built midrange has room to breathe, and the quiet is actually quiet. If you are the kind of listener who files Sigur Rós next to home-soldered IDM curios, the Frakkur 2000 - 2004 vinyl earns its shelf space.

Context helps the music land. During 2000 to 2004, Sigur Rós were touring hard and growing into larger rooms, yet Jónsi was clearly spending nights chasing small sounds on a laptop and a handful of cheap tools. Fans traded MP3s of this material for years, sometimes grouped into informal volumes, and the mythology outgrew the files. Having it assembled and sanctioned gives it weight. It also lets you hear the connective tissue, how ideas from this world later fed into his broader palette, not as direct quotes but as a way of thinking about rhythm, negative space, and collage.

As a physical object, it also scratches that collector itch. Frakkur vinyl sat alongside other Krúnk curios on that 2019 list, but this one feels essential, not just an appendix. If you hunt for Frakkur albums on vinyl, keep an eye out for clean copies because the quieter passages deserve it. And if you are trying to buy Frakkur records online, patience can pay off, since copies surface in waves after shop drops. Record hounds browsing vinyl records Australia will find it popping up in specialty bins, and a good Melbourne record store clerk will know exactly why you are asking for it.

This set will not convert anyone who needs a stadium-sized chorus. It is for late nights and low lamp light, for hearing a famous voice think with his hands. Frakkur - 2000 - 2004 vinyl captures the spark of a musician discovering that tiny sounds can be a universe. For long-time followers, it fills a real gap. For newcomers, it is a surprisingly welcoming door into a quieter corner of Jónsi’s world.