When Sigur Rós hit Australia for the first time in early August, 2005, hysteria ensued. The two shows they played – in Melbourne and Sydney – sold out in nano-seconds, and eager beavers lined up outside the venues, eagerly awaiting their first live taste of these Icelandic sensations.

“That’s always a surprise,” humbly states drummer Orri Pall Dyrason, in his clipped Icelandic-accented English. “We’ve had a really good response here. We played in Melbourne, and we had a really hard time with the new mics and everything, so it was really hard.”

Touring around the world, of course, necessitates the use of rental equipment, especially when you come to such far flung lands as Australia for the first time. It is, unsurprisingly, a different story when the band are in Europe or America. “When you go from continent to continent, you do, but when you’re driving across America or Europe you have your own equipment all the time.”

At the time, new album Takk... was an unknown and elusive quantity – some long-lead publications had received their advanced promotional copies, and it was, of course, already filtering throughout the internet. So, what’s it like?

“It’s amazing!” Orrie sings from the rafter with wide-eyed enthusiasm. “We’re all really happy with it. It’s more colourful, and we’re having much more fun making this album.”

Orrie indicates that the band didn’t have much fun making ( ). Is that because of pressure after the incredible success of the deservedly praised Áegætis Byrjun?

“That happened,” he says. “We’d been playing the songs [that eventually appeared on the title-less ( )]for a long time before we went into the studio, so they were all properly made and we didn’t dare to change them very much. So it was really hard to have the songs and then record them perfectly like we wanted.

It was a vastly different recording process for Takk..., with the band entering the studio with a scant two songs prepared. “We went in and just started recording and making songs and it was a 20 month process – we were recording and changing songs, even when we were mixing we were taking parts and adding parts. It was great fun. That really shines through, I think, in the songs.”

It was once more recorded in the band’s own studio, this time with the assistance of Ken Thomas, that used to be a swimming pool. With the sound that it gives, Orri surprises by indicating that, yes, the band are thinking of recording elsewhere next time around. However, he still sings the virtues of their home studio, based just outside Reykjavik, in an old factory area.

“It’s a pretty special place – it’s a big open space, a concrete square, and it’s a bit of a big, hard sound, and it’s really nice.”

In fact, Orri just moved there it’s so nice. “It’s really much privacy,” he stumbles awkwardly grammatically forward.

Like everyone, he was surprised when everything exploded for the band. They went from unknowns battling away to commanding sets at major international festivals like Glastonbury, Rosskilde, and Coachella. “It’s always getting bigger and bigger,” he confirms. “It’s a bonus – we make our music and people like it. Some of it is sung in Hopelandic, but most of it is in Icelandic,” he says of the mythical language created by the angelically-voiced frontman Jon Thor Birgisson, and his use of it on Takk.... “The last album was in Hopelandic, but the new album and Áegætis Byrjun are in Icelandic. We wanted to make lyrics for this album. It’s very simple lyrics and simple stories.”

The band have never actually given thought to singing in English, because after all, they are still an ‘Icelandic band’ first and foremost – so why not sing in your native language?? There’s something about the Icelandic music scene there that produces music that seems almost otherworldly. “We have, in Iceland, all sorts of bands – we have hip hop, and we have all sorts of music,” Orri explains. “When you’re in Iceland, there’s no special type of music.”

Yet then there’s music like the Sugarcubes, and Bjork, and Sigur Rós themselves, who all make music that doesn’t seem to have any time or place to it – it’s eternal, and wrapped up in an individuality that is all its own. “Yeah, maybe,” he grins with a shake of his floppy blonde fringe. “I don’t know where that comes from. Maybe it’s from the lack of sun. But we don’t think about it, and we don’t think about the landscapes, the Icelandic landscapes.”

Of Takk..., Orri explains that it was always the intent to make it as textured as the last record. “We were blowing up things there’s so many tracks on things. There’s over 100 tracks on the one song.”

How do you do that?

“We just tend to overdo things, and it’s great fun – we’re experimenting a lot, and just having fun.”

These songs only formed in the studio. Undoubtedly, that gives the band more scope to experiment and push the boundaries, and use their time judiciously to really push themselves. “Because the songs were just ideas and we were working they were not so formed, and they were not a song, until the end. It was much more open, and there was much more freedom to do stuff.”

It’s undoubtedly a more playful album than the dark ( ). “The other album was a bit more heavy in parts,” he agrees, “and we were just feeling ‘better’. We are people, and life has its ups and downs, and we were feeling good with our lives.”

And doesn’t that just make all the difference. “We were not thinking about it, and it wasn’t a conscious decision, but we were just focussing on playing and making music.”

The band’s original album, Von, came out way back in 1997 (and has only recently been available worldwide rather than simply in Iceland), with the band originally formed some three years prior to that, and Orri joined the group in 1999, just as Áegætis Byrjun was forming shape. “I was in another band, and we had the same rehearsal space, and I was invited to join.”

Sigur Rós are definitely one of the strangest bands to be on a major label – they are now signed to EMI for everywhere around the world except America, where they’re released by Geffen, and Iceland, where they’re on Bad Taste. “We were on Fat Cat/PIAS, and it’s a bit of a sad story,” he explains, “because Fat Cat are really good friends of ours and they did a deal with Play It Again Sam, and that was a really bad move, because Play it Again Sam were doing a really bad job, and we just wanted to get out of that, and we wanted to get on EMI, where we’ve got complete creative freedom.”

Naturally enough, any self-respecting major label wouldn’t dream trying to control a band like Sigur Ros. “No, they can’t. They shouldn’t,” he affirms. “They’ve been really good to us so far, and given us a lot of time – like I said, we spent 20 months in the studio, working.”

Of that, how much of that goes in writing and planning?

“It starts with the writing and the playing together, and then we start recording, and then we start writing again, and then playing, and then mixing. But still we were changing things.”

Essentially, the band write the basic parts, and think about the songs and what would be good for them and what would make them better. But how do you know when a song is finished?

“We could work forever – like any band, it’s never perfect,” Orri says. “We just have to let go, and we know when it’s there, when we stop adding things to it, but then when it comes to the mixing we can be really anal.”

How do you feel about it leaking on the internet, given the amount of control you want to have over it, given that you got your break through word-of-mouth generated in large part by the internet?

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” he shrugs. “It’s good for small bands like us, but like with going to a show and getting an album afterwards, I think that’s a good idea. The internet is good in that it makes the world a lot smaller, and it’s helped Icelandic music a lot.”

Sigur Rós’ Takk... is out now.