Sigur Ros - Variations On Darkness (LP)

Sigur Rós have always treated atmosphere like a living thing, and Variations On Darkness is one of those releases where you can almost feel the air thicken as the record spins. Issued as a limited edition for Record Store Day 2019 on the band’s own Krunk imprint, it gathers music created with the Iceland Dance Company for stage works in Reykjavík. That context matters. These pieces were built to move bodies in a room, to map light and shadow across space, and you can hear that physical intent in the way rhythms stalk and dissolve, and in how textures seem to pivot around an unseen choreography.

This isn’t a set of songs in the trad sense. It’s a series of mood-rooms, each with its own gravitational pull. The palette leans into the more austere corner of the Sigur Rós universe. Think Valtari’s vaporous drift, then pour in more grit and subterranean rumble. Low-end pulses roll in like distant weather. Guitars are treated as tone generators rather than riff machines, bowed and blurred until they become foghorns over black water. Percussion doesn’t so much keep time as carve it into slabs, suddenly dropping out to leave a cold, charged quiet. It’s closer to sound design than rock, yet it never feels clinical. There’s a human tremor in there, a heartbeat that keeps the tension from tipping into abstraction for its own sake.

The dance connection also gives the record a shape that’s different to their canonical albums. You can sense cues and turns baked into the arrangements, as if the music is listening, ready to make room for bodies. This pays off on vinyl. Side breaks feel like curtains falling and rising, and Variations On Darkness vinyl pulls you through suites that bloom and recede with an almost theatrical logic. It rewards a full-side sit rather than a quick needle drop. Play it late, let the room go quiet, and the details start flashing their signals. A stray chime that anchors a whole passage. A choir-like smear that hovers just out of focus, familiar yet hard to name.

Context within the catalogue is where it gets interesting. Coming after the expansive Liminal live mixes and before the grand, choral sweep that would later return to the fore, this record works like a shadow companion to the band’s widescreen post-rock reputation. It shows how comfortable Sigur Rós are when melody is a rumor and the drama sits in texture. If you’re hunting Sigur Rós vinyl that broadens the story rather than repeating it, this is a sharp pick. It doesn’t chase the slow-burn crescendo they helped define on Ágætis byrjun or Takk!, but it carries the same sense of wonder, just refracted through darker glass.

Because it arrived as a Record Store Day title, availability came and went quickly in shops, and the whole thing has the aura of a document made for people who still love the ritual of the format. If you collect Sigur Rós albums on vinyl, it sits alongside the live curios and scores as a piece that fleshes out the band’s world rather than shouting for the spotlight. And for anyone browsing around to buy Sigur Rós records online, it’s worth seeking out precisely because it doesn’t overlap with the classic studio albums. It’s focused, cohesive, and strangely tactile for a record built from smoke and shadow.

There’s also a quiet thrill to how it confirms the band’s appetite for cross-disciplinary work. The Reykjavík dance pieces didn’t just commission background ambience. They sparked a set of compositions that stand on their own, and on record they feel complete. The sound may be sparse, but nothing is left to chance. Every swell and scrape earns its place. By the time the needle lifts, you’re not humming a tune so much as recalling a space you passed through, with corners you want to revisit.

For searchers and crate diggers alike, Variations On Darkness vinyl isn’t a gateway album; it’s a deep cut with a strong pulse. That’s exactly why it sticks. If your shelves already hold the big hitters and you’re exploring the edges, this one carries the weather of Icelandic stages into your lounge room and lets it linger. It’s a thoughtful addition to any stack of vinyl records Australia-wide, and a reminder that Sigur Rós still find new ways to make silence feel alive.