Our tech overlords have come to a realization: The internet is as ambient as the air we breathe. Confined first to computer screens, then phones, tablets, and watches, online information may soon be seamlessly embedded into our lives like never before. Silicon Valley’s big players are currently betting heavily on glasses that could replace Siri or Alexa with a digital assistant that looks and sounds as present as another person in the room. Turbo-boosted by machine learning, and with their power of illusion limited only by the human imagination, these new devices could herald a major cultural and economic shift. According to tech giants, the not-so distant future will include holographic droids clanking around our homes, and a baby elephant in the palm of every child.

All of which sounds kind of goofy—especially to anyone who remembers the epic flop known as Google Glass. But it’s the next step in technology companies’ expensive pursuit of virtual reality. Classic VR brings into being the sci-fi dreams of an entirely computer-generated world. But now there’s also “augmented reality,” familiar from 2016’s Pokémon Go craze, where digital information is layered over a person’s physical surroundings. Most transformative of all could be “mixed reality,” which allows virtual objects to interact with a person’s natural environment: The Matrix, but set in your living room.

One of the most closely watched practitioners of mixed reality is a secretive startup called Magic Leap. The company has raised almost $2 billion in funding from Valley heavyweights, including Google. A Wired cover story from last year marveled at the company’s “magical goggles,” which can project virtual objects that are indistinguishable from the real-life scenes around them. Despite all the attention, though, Magic Leap has yet to publicly demo a prototype, let alone release a product, and serious questions remain about whether its extravagant virtual reality promises will ever near actual reality. So when the company recently invited a Pitchfork writer to travel down to their South Florida headquarters to test some new, never-before-seen wares, I started packing my bags. Why Pitchfork? Because, you see, Magic Leap also has its sights set on music.

For a little more than four years, the unearthly Iceland art-rock band Sigur Rós have been working with Magic Leap on a new audiovisual project that tests the limits of mixed reality—and offers a tantalizing glimpse of how we may soon interact with music as a medium. The result is Tónandi, an app that someday may be available for download on Magic Leap’s mysterious device, which still has no official release date. The app aims to complement the band’s dreamy aesthetic: Its name is a made-up Icelandic portmanteau that literally means “sound spirit,” which is represented in the VR environment as a multitude of lifelike organisms. The demo I try out at their sprawling facility lasts about eight to 10 minutes and incorporates new music the band recorded especially for the app. The ambition is to conjure up an entire ecosystem out of sound.

Fantastical as it may seem, the demo pulls this off beautifully. Upon my arrival at Magic Leap, I’m quickly fitted with the current incarnation of their device (the company has strict agreements prohibiting visitors from discussing its hardware; following the publication of this article, Magic Leap revealed the look of their headset, which will begin shipping in 2018). And then it begins: There’s a nervous hum, and then I see a group of little sprites floating around in front of me. The jellyfish-like creatures seem to match the waveform of the music I’m hearing through headphones. Encouraged to explore with my hands, I reach out, causing the waveforms to alter shape—both visually and in the audio playback, like a SoundCloud embed that’s somehow alive, three-dimensional, and responding to my movements. After initial sheepishness, I chase these non-existent tónandi like a clumsily psychotic bear in a very expensive gadget shop.