Why have you done a solo album? Because whilst I was with Sigur Rós, all the decisions and ideas were all done together. So a lot of the songs I came up with were not used, I ended up having a collection of songs I had created at home over the years.

How did you get started? It was easy to get the album going. For some weird reason we stopped getting newspapers sent to my house. I also have no television and I don’t listen to the radio, so I got blocked out from the world a little bit. It was quite nice I have to say, to take a break. You’re bombarded with these atrocities every day and not everything is so bad. It was good to have a break from this whilst recording.

Are you planning more projects? Yes, I’m quite easily bored so I like to keep busy doing projects. Life is so short – you just do stuff and then you die, so I want to do a lot of shit before I die.

How does Go differ from Sigur Rós? Sigur Rós is quite floatey and dreamy. I wanted to go away from that and make this more happy, playful and colourful. People are going to probably be surprised, it’s definitely different. It’s more rhythmic and more energetic, it’s hard to describe. Maybe a little more poppy.

Can you explain the title Go? There are some hopes and fears in the lyrics. The more powerful and colourful songs are more about go for it, do everything you want and let your dreams come true. The slower, sadder songs are more about, fear. Everybody has this fear in their stomach that keeps them down, they’re afraid to do things. So I think its about that too, overcoming that fear.

Anything strange about the recording? I sang all the vocals in my living room, in my kitchen. We also did a lot of samplers, hand claps and stomping and stuff at home.

The neighbours must love you? No… usually people in Iceland like Sigur Rós, but I think I have the only neighbour in the world who hates me, who hates my voice and everything I do. I can’t do anything at home. He stomps the floor like crazy, but it’s funny though. As soon as I start playing piano or sing, he cranks up Barry White or Justin Timberlake, I can hear it through the floorboards. But I’m moving soon so that’s good.

How does the final album sound? Nobody has heard it in the band except the keyboard player Kjartan. He hated it… no… he liked it, he told me so when he was really drunk so I think it’s good.

You’ve put out a DVD, Go Quiet, where you perform the album in your flat. What’s the story? I had had a crazy New Year’s Eve party where I had totally trashed my apartment and my neighbours got really mad. I lived in the apartment trashed for a few days, so we filmed it in the aftermath. We did the whole album as an acoustic version, maybe how it was supposed to be.

What can we expect from your show? Some kind of scaled down version of the album, but also crazier, more dirtier, raw and energetic definitely.

Jonsi’s Go is out now, through EMI Records.