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The first week of October may well be the perfect time of year for listening to Sigur Rós, and in particular to their anonymous 2002 album, identified by title only with a pair of parentheses. This is music for marking the Vernal Equinox, when the long evening light of Summer gives way to the low overcast skies of early Autumn.

Pardon the dime-store poetry, but the sound of this Icelandic quartet can sometimes have that effect on a sensitive listener. And with an untitled album of eight untitled songs the spell is even more hypnotic, engaging the imagination at a level not possible in a more explicit musical arrangement (obviously, the language barrier is an added bonus here).

At its best, and I have yet to hear anything by them that qualifies for anything less, the music of Sigur Rós combines an almost liturgical sense of serenity with moments of joyful pagan release. A few of the songs here still rise to that familiar cinematic crescendo (notably tracks 5 through 7), but for the most part there's less emphasis on the high- decibel guitar and string drones of other Sigur Rós recordings.

The pace is slower, the soundstage even less cluttered than usual, and the writing is more open and organic, sounding almost acoustic despite the heavy emphasis on Eno-inspired ambient electronics. Like the wide arctic skies above their native Iceland, it's an album of stark, introspective beauty, best experienced between a pair of good headphones, without any distraction.