Early Birds catches this Icelandic unit in its fledgling stages, when it was still creating compact pop gems out of diverse analog and digital fragments. Founding members Gunnar Orn Tynes and Orvar Smarason combine a childlike playfulness with a precocious sense of craft in these tracks, recorded between 1998 and 2000 at various European studios. Hints of everything from the kitschy tones of Silicon Teens to the ambient grandeur of Aphex Twin can be heard here, along with a Nordic sensibility that’s both inviting and austere. In this incarnation, Mum is a protean outfit, able to blend acoustic guitars with techno colors (“Mum Spilar La La La”), match tinny beats with carnival keys (“Gingurt”), and paint small, sparkling landscapes (“Hufeland”). The pop sensibility that blossomed on Mum’s sophomore album, Finally We Are No One, is only occasionally evident; conventional verse/chorus structures seem far away from what Gunnar and Orvar have in mind. But the Early Birds pieces have a freshness and intimacy that makes them of interest to any admirer of quirky, homebrewed electronica.