Sigur Ros's

Words like "inspiring," "expansive," and "moving" are regularly used to describe Sigur Ros' ( ), and yet the only words heard on the record itself are a handful of meaningless nonsense syllables. The album had no title - or rather its title was no title: just an empty pair of parentheses. The intent was that listeners would fill in the parentheses with their own title, their own interpretation of the sounds on the record. The CD sleeve consisted of twelve pages that were essentially blank, lacking song titles, liner notes or production credits. Instead, just semi-translucent frosted images of abstract natural scenes (tree branches, clouds, etc.), on which the listener is free to inscribe their own notes - or no notes at all. And then there were the lyrics, sung in a deliberately unintelligible tongue called "Hopelandic" which the band invited listeners to interpret freely.

Ethan Hayden's book doesn't try to fill in the gaps between the album's parentheses, but instead explores the ways in which listeners might attempt to do so. Examining the communicative powers of nonsensical language, the book asks whether music can bring sense to nonsense. What happens to the voice when it stops singing conventional language: does it simply become another musical instrument, or is it somehow more "human"? What role does space play on ( )? And how do we interpret music that we cannot possibly understand, but feel very deeply that we do?

Ethan Hayden is a composer and performer, currently pursuing a Ph.D. in music at the University at Buffalo, US.