Unexpected news for fans of Sigur Ros: the Icelandic group is releasing its first album of new compositions in 10 years on Friday.

Entitled ATTA, the disc has 10 tracks on which Jonsi poses in a high pitched voice words in his invented language. This new disc promises to be quite different from the powerful Kveikur, released in June 2013, two months after an amazing concert at the Bell Centre.

ATTA is described as the group’s most “intimate” album to date, which tends to confirm Blooberg, the only track released to date. Kjartan Sveinsson (various instruments), who left Sigur Ros in 2012, is back with Jonsi (vocals and guitar) and Georg Holm (bass).

The aesthetic of this new album promises to be less rock – or rather post-rock – than what the Icelanders have accustomed their audience to. ATTA was recorded with the assistance of the London Contemporary Orchestra, a brass ensemble and put, announces the group, on very orchestral arrangements.

The track Blooberg suggests that there is a certain relationship between Sigur Ros’s next album and Riceboy Sleeps, a side project led by Jonsi and Alex Somers, which the two composers came to present on stage in the fall of 2019 at the Place Arts.