Jónsi is set to release triple album of previously unheard archive material dating to the early 2000s, when he made music under the name of Frakkur. Frakkur 2000-2004 is to be digitally released on Nov. 23, and can be preordered or pre-saved here.
Frakkur was the moniker Jónsi used for his experiments in electronic music in the early years of the 21st century. Working on his own, either at home in Reykjavík, in hotel rooms on tour, or later at his boyfriend’s house in Boston, Jónsi spent endless hours diving into then-new bits of equipment and software, having fun and seeing how far he could push things outside the bounds of his day job in Sigur Rós. His full recorded legacy as Frakkur comprises three collections of work, totaling 24 tracks over 108 minutes, each made a year or so apart under slightly different circumstances and with different equipment. These recordings are now being collated into one triple album, Frakkur 2000-2004, which will be available digitally from November 23.
The oldest, 2000-2001, was made on Jónsi’s first PC laptop, named The Tank for its unwieldy size. A record of unrequited love for a straight boy at home in Reykjavík, SFTLB was Jónsi’s way of dealing with heartbreak via sampling kalimbas and music boxes and channelling it all through the Fruity Loops program. The second, 2002-2003, was made in his small flat in the middle of Reykjavík, where he set up his first home studio in a cupboard, so that it could be packed away at night. He had a Yamaha RS-7000 with 32mb memory in the top drawer, which he called the Grey Machine and used to sample the beat-up toys he’d collect from local goodwill stores. Jónsi recalls it as a time “filled with blinding sunlight and pure fun creative energy”. The final part of the Frakkur trilogy, 2003-2004, was made in Cambridge, MA. in breaks of Sigur Rós touring. His partner, Alex Somers, had by then introduced Jónsi to the program Logic, and this he coupled with a Yamaha VSS-30 toy keyboard to sample his voice in what he describes as a spontaneous and exciting process.
For many years the music represented on the Frakkur collection was thought lost, since Jónsi’s unbacked-up hard-drive eventually corrupted. However, Alex had shared burned CDRs of the music with some of his close friends around Boston, and one of these came to light around a decade later, thus saving the project from oblivion. The songs on Frakkur 2000-2004 have been mastered for the first time for this release, with some of the glitches and drop-outs that bedevilled peer-to-peer shares now eradicated.
Leave a Comment