‘Takk…’, the fourth album from Sigur Rós, is released by Geffen Records on September 13. Written, performed and produced by the band (along with co-producer Ken Thomas) at their studio in Álafoss, Iceland, ‘Takk…’ is the record to justify every amazing claim ever laid at this exceptional band’s door.

Huge and intimate, orchestral and gossamer-light, rich layered and essentially simple, ‘Takk…’ is a work of a band operating at the very top of their game. It accomplishes what maybe they haven’t done since they first appeared, which is to make high-flown ideas appear to be straight ahead pop music, or, perhaps more accurately, invest pop music with a sense of magic long since lost in the mists of time and imagination.

‘Takk…’ seems to operate so far outside the confines of what else is going on as to make comparison futile. That the band was not going to be held by any narrow categorization was apparent from the beginning. That they might be capable of creativity at this level of freedom and imagination was more than any of us might ever have hoped for. ‘Takk…’ is an instant classic, and might well turn out to be Sigur Rós’s masterpiece.

“There is nothing clever about Sigur Rós and how we write songs, it’s just mucking about really. It’s all very spontant (sic),” says the band’s Kjartan Sveinsson, although most musicians could muck about for millennia and never come up with anything approaching ‘Takk…’.

Flowing through 65 minutes of 11 linked pieces, ‘Takk…’ came together relatively quickly (in Sigur Rós terms), with recording starting in earnest last December and mixing finishing this June. The running order more or less wrote itself by the spring, with several additional songs naturally falling by the wayside as the record took shape.

The band deliberately put a halt to live performances two years ago, to ensure anything they wrote towards the album would remain fresh in their minds. As a result only two of the songs on ‘Takk…’ have ever been heard at shows (prior to the band’s current European jaunt), with the remaining nine taking off in a multitude of new directions, only hinted at by the band’s previous work.

Ideas burst free in every direction, where before the band might have worked through a concept to its utter conclusion (playing and developing a song as slowly as possible – the origin of a thousand ‘glacial’ metaphors), they now burn through ideas with scant regard. Songs begin in one time signature and end in another, having morphed beyond recognition on their passage through. A beautiful piano motif will be bombed into submission by power chords, which in turn will succumb to a heavenly string-led calm after the storm.

That said, Sigur Rós can still take a breathtakingly long time to get to the point. The see-sawing strings and distant piano of ‘Milano’ are like watching Omar Shariff appear on the horizon in Lawrence of Arabia, while, the orchestration towards the end of ‘Andvari’ changes almost imperceptibly on its way towards its epiphany.

Elsewhere, ‘Takk…’ is literally packed with music, so much so, that you wonder how the band managed to keep the space, clarity and separation in the sound. The ascent of ‘Svo Hljott’ is dizzying and disorientating, while ‘Glosoli’ features the crump of no fewer than three bass drums, before taking us through the ceiling of the song with a guitar that keep climbing long after you think it must have reached its zenith.

‘Takk…’ is, according to the band (with Icelandic tongue firmly placed in Icelandic cheek), a “rock’n’roll record” – and it certainly is on occasion played both loud and fast – but few of the clichés of the genre come through Sigur Rós intact. In fact, listening to ‘Takk…’ it is not images of rebellion or off-the-peg degradation that comes to mind, but more a feeling of being washed clean by music. Even when they rock Sigur Rós provide a clear spot of sanctity and at the end of the record, the prevailing feeling is one of peace.

Sigur Ros have occupied a unique place in the hearts and record collections of a knowing cognescenti since 1999, when their second album, ‘Ágćtis Byrjun’, broke cover outside Iceland to become a huge word-of-mouth hit, selling nearly 600,000 records worldwide.

Described by Q Magazine at the time as “the last great record of the 20th century” (and voted the Greatest Record of the Century at home), ‘Ágćtis Byrjun’’s strange and alien beauty seemed to fill an emotional void nobody had previously noticed existed. And, all of a sudden, four boys from Reykjavik, still in their early twenties, were swept up in a tide of praise, opportunity and expectation, which was perhaps the antithesis of the environment that created them.

Not unreasonably the band reacted by going deeper underground. In the time between ‘Ágćtis Byrjun’’s appearance in Iceland and its final release in Japan, nearly three years later, the group toured relentlessly, avoiding the boredom of endlessly playing the album by road testing new material, also to near destruction, such that when they came to record a follow-up record, they were in effect already done with the songs.

The resultant untitled ‘( )’ album was a struggle to record, with the band chasing mythical live versions of its dark material, with little more resolve than finally getting the thing done and dusted, while they struggled with their newly built swimming pool studio just outside of Reykjavik. If ‘Agaetis Byrjun’ had been flooded with light and on occasion almost Disney-esque hope, then ‘( )’ was, more often than not, a journey down a long dark tunnel with only a flickering candle for company.

Nevertheless, ‘( )’ – which also bore no song titles, the better to focus attention on the music - was very well received on its release in October 2002, and stands today as a brave testament to how far a bunch of independent people can push an achingly anti-commercial idea if they set their minds to it. ‘( )” is a mordant and powerful piece of work, which, like its predecessor, has sold getting on for 600,000 records.

Throughout this time, the band’s reputation as a live act continued to grow, with all manner of people slowly drawn to their deliberate lack of meaning or agenda. If music is removed from a lyrical context then its emotional resonance can be freely interpreted by the listener, however they wish. This means Sigur Rós can, and do, mean nothing and everything. This could be called taking the long way round.

It was in this context that Sigur Rós approached the recording of the album now known as ‘Takk…’. And a complete re-think was on the cards. So, the touring bit the dust in the summer of 2003, with the band bowing out after triumphant shows at Glastonbury and Roskilde, and the emphasis was placed on, well, placing no emphasis.

Side projects were gobbled up (since releasing ‘( )’ Sigur Ros have, as a group or individually, been involved in no fewer than 13 extra-curricular activities, including writing music for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as well as the Danish Royal ballet; composing and performing the 70-minute orchestral work ‘Odin’s Raven Magic’; scoring a couple of independent films; pursuing solo projects; working with and producing fellow Icelandic artists; and sometimes just arsing about), and time out taken to recharge batteries. If Sigur Rós were going to go beyond the Icelandic band norm of imploding three albums in, then they might as well make the next record worth the wait.

I think it’s safe to say with ‘Takk…’: mission accomplished.