Svefn-g-englar

Sigur Rós announced themselves on Ágætis byrjun with ten minutes of Jónsi Birgisson playing his guitar with a violin bow while a sonar-pulse keyboard figure looped underneath. “Svefn-g-englar” means “sleepwalkers” in Icelandic, and the song moves at the pace of someone walking half-awake across a snowfield in blue light.

It sounds like weather in the specific register of Icelandic weather — slow, enormous, alien, intermittently broken by a single bell-like tone that arrives on a cycle you will only notice on the second or third listen. Ten minutes that feel like three. Put it on and let the front come through.