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The game-changing future of music or Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s folly \u2013 her craziest idea since turning up to the Oscars dressed as a swan? In 2011, Biophilia, her eighth album, was also an iPad app, an interactive, audio-visual journey into the wonders of science, nature and music that grew out of a near career-ending crisis. Baffled? Don\u2019t be. \u201cThink of it as a cauliflower!\u201d she told Mark Paytress.<\/p>\n
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Given the buzz that surrounds Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s new project \u2013 a cutting-edge multimedia initiative that reimagines \u2018the album\u2019 for the 21st century \u2013 the setting for our rendezvous could hardly be less hi-tech: a discreet, boutique hotel close to the singer\u2019s home in west London. \u201cIt\u2019s a blue-rinse ladies area,\u201d she giggles, a hidden place where an international icon, dressed in an orange, koala-style wig and a mustard cape right out of Emma Peel\u2019s wardrobe, can waltz about freely.<\/p>\n
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Commanding attention has rarely been difficult for Bj\u00f6rk, the perfect embodiment of all things chic and pleasingly peculiar. But even our most distinctive and fleet-footed musicians have, in recent times, been forced to rethink their strategies as the entertainment industry undergoes tumultuous changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have a choice,\u201d says Bj\u00f6rk, fidgeting on a deep sofa that threatens to swallow her up. \u201cEverything seemed to happen in summer 2008. I lost my voice, there was the bank crash in Iceland, I\u2019d finished the Volta tour and I was off all my record deals. It was like, all the old rules, they just don\u2019t work any more. I wanted to reconnect with stuff that actually works.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result is Biophilia, Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s eighth full-length studio album. In purely musical terms, it\u2019s arguably her most subtle, magical and downright gorgeous creation since 2001\u2019s Vespertine. Enriched by cosmic choirs, crackling, Dr Frankenstein-style bursts of electricity and gloomy pipe organs, its 10 songs shimmer with glacial mystery and imagination. So far, so happily anticipated. But Biophilia is also \u201cmore\u201d than an album. Last autumn, film-maker and longtime Bj\u00f6rk collaborator Michel Gondry let slip that Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s next album would be more akin to \u201ca scientific musical\u201d. One year on, Biophilia is revealed as an investigation into the science of nature and sound using songs and gaming-style visuals via a suite of different apps on an Apple iPad, a fairly unprecedented exercise in the annals of entertainment.<\/p>\n
Already confused? If so, Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s own explanation of Biophilia may not help. One minute, she\u2019s insisting that working on the album, \u201cwasn\u2019t that different to making a music video\u201d, next that Biophilia can work as \u201ca semi-educational project for children using sound, texts and visuals.\u201d Bj\u00f6rk describes it as a multi-stemmed thing of beauty, rooted in nature; \u201cThink of it as a cauliflower!\u201d she concludes, helpfully.<\/p>\n
As a gentle introduction to this new idea, Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s PR brings along an iPad loaded with the first of the Biophilia apps. It doesn\u2019t go quite to plan. Though the cosmic, visual world of Biophilia that swirls before my eyes looks intriguing enough, I clumsily press a finger on the wrong part of the screen and end up accessing the PR\u2019s private emails. Soon the words, \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t she have made a normal album?\u201d are etched across my frown. \u201cI don\u2019t even trust this tiny digital recorder,\u201d I complain, indicating my dictaphone.<\/p>\n
Bj\u00f6rk instinctively tunes in. \u201cI\u2019ve got the same feeling as you,\u201d she says. \u201cThese little things where every button has 10 functions\u2026 yuk. But the touchscreen is for people who don\u2019t like that sort of thing. It works for kids. It plugs into acoustic and natural worlds. It might be difficult to explain in words, but\u2026 it\u2019s simple!\u201d<\/p>\n
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Operated properly, Biophilia begins on the iPad screen as a slow- moving black-and-white virtual galaxy, song titles attached to 10 individually-shaped sparkling constellations. On headphones, a cosmic choir \u201cOoohs\u201d in the manner of a landing spaceship. This is the \u2018mother app\u2019, a free download from iTunes that features Biophilia\u2019s grand, brassy theme, Cosmogony. One \u2018star\u2019 shines brighter than the rest. It is called Crystalline, and eight more will follow in the weeks ahead.<\/p>\n
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Choosing Crystalline with a thumb-and-forefinger \u2018pinch\u2019 (mouse pad clicks are so pass\u00e9) provides transportation to a vortex of brightly coloured tunnels. By tilting the iPad, the crystal travels down the tunnels changing in shape and size. In an act of deliberate synchronicity, the shape of the song is determined by the route taken. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Other options invite you to save your crystal (and, with viral marketing in mind, the chance to mail it to friends), call up the lyrics and musical score, scour detailed notes explaining the relationship between the science of the song and the dimension of nature depicted, and sing karaoke-style to an animated visualisation of the track. All options seem to carry \u2013 and incite \u2013 different versions of the song. To describe this as an app album seems inadequate. It\u2019s something else entirely, a headspinning adventure into an otherworld of entertainment, but which bears little resemblance to the simple pleasure of just listening to music.<\/p>\n
Back at the mother app, a familiar voice concludes the journey: \u201cListen, learn and create\u2026 We\u2019re on the brink of a revolution.\u201d It is David Attenborough, an inspiration for Bj\u00f6rk since childhood, and the perfect host for this \u2018wonder of learning\u2019 venture. The key phrase used by the veteran naturalist \u2013 the one that defines Biophilia \u2013 is \u201crestless curiosity\u201d. It seems neatly, definitively Bj\u00f6rkian.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spend a lot of time working in the imaginary,\u201d she explains. \u201cFor Biophilia, I was imagining instruments that didn\u2019t exist, imagining apps that didn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever else may be said about it, as a feat of imagination it is impressive. The project\u2019s vast scope, meticulously drawn to perfection, crowns a career that\u2019s always been unorthodox.<\/p>\n
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The album artwork for Biophilia<\/p>\n
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Her name, the penchant for eye-catching outfits, a series of stunning videos that intelligently complement the music, and of course that gushing, fountain-like signature voice: each element has helped Bj\u00f6rk chart a wilfully wayward course in a career that stretches back, remarkably, to 1977. That\u2019s when she released her first album \u2013 a concoction of home-grown folk-pop augmented by Beatles and Melanie covers. Just 12, the early exposure could have prompted a Lena Zavaroni-style burn-out. Instead, the precocious music school prodigy became a teenage participant in Reykjavik\u2019s anarcho-punk scene, before ascending to quirky alt.stardom in the late \u201980s as part of The Sugarcubes.<\/p>\n
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Always that band\u2019s major asset, Bj\u00f6rk kicked off an inevitable solo career in remarkable, icon-creating style with 1993\u2019s beats-driven Debut. A huge international success, it became a platform for a career built on depth and innovation. Musically, this has led her through the neo-classical abstractions of Vespertine (2001) and the \u201cepic playfulness\u201d of the voice-dominated Med\u00falla (2004) to 2007\u2019s career-condensing blow-out Volta. There have been diversions into art house cinema (Lars Von Trier\u2019s grimly intense Dancer In The Dark, 2000), collaborations with her partner, American extreme-installation artist Matthew Barney, and wildly theatrical stage productions that bear little relation to the standard rock concert.
It hasn\u2019t gone unnoticed. In August 2010, Bj\u00f6rk picked up Sweden\u2019s prestigious Polar Music Prize, a Nobel gong of sorts, previously won by Paul McCartney and Pierre Boulez. \u201cBj\u00f6rk is an untameable force of nature,\u201d insisted the jury, \u201can artist who marches to nobody\u2019s tune but her own.\u201d Behind the scenes, however, it was feared that Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s idiosyncratic path had reached a dead end.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I discovered I had nodules on my voice,\u201d she says, \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I would sing again, at least, not as I used to. I didn\u2019t wanna have an operation, so I saw all these experts and started this process, exercises that slowly stretch out the vocal cords.\u201d There were no guarantees that it would work.<\/p>\n
Calamitous news emanating from her native Iceland in September 2008 also affected her badly. When the country\u2019s three major banks collapsed, threatening to bankrupt the nation, Iceland was plunged into a major economic and political crisis. Bj\u00f6rk was mortified. \u201cSuddenly, I was surrounded by unemployment, bankruptcies, people who had worked hard all their lives who were like 60 years old and had lost their jobs.\u201d
As if that wasn\u2019t enough to contend with, the record industry continued its seemingly irreversible meltdown. Then a revelation of sorts offered a glimmer of hope\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the touchscreen that started this whole project off,\u201d admits Bj\u00f6rk, fast shaking off her initial guardedness. \u201cWe used Lemurs and Reactables for the Volta tour, and I was like, Wow! Technology doesn\u2019t have to be clumsy and boring any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bj\u00f6rk gave the Reactable \u2013 a touch-screen synthesizer \u2013 its live pop debut at Coachella in April, 2007. But it was the iPad that allowed her to write new music, with new shapes. \u201cWith the touchscreen in my lap,\u201d she explains, \u201cI could make one bass pattern shaped like a mountain, and the next one like a triangle. It was tactile and organic. All the patterns in house music had been so square.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thrilled to be able to compose visually, Bj\u00f6rk next investigated algorithms \u2013 \u201cthe math of a pendulum swinging back and forth, or a pattern based on a waterfall or the sun\u2019s movement in a single year. We\u2019d programme this into the touchscreen, link it up with an acoustic instrument, then play it by moving one finger,\u201d she says excitedly. \u201cThat for me was, like, total breakthrough. I was just having the fit of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
But while new technology was working wonders, old ways of selling music were not. \u201cI was in a spoilt position,\u201d Bj\u00f6rk admits, \u201cknowing that I could make a living from music even though [CD] sales were dropping.\u201d But she wasn\u2019t happy. A warning sign came in 2003 when the industry succumbed to digital-piracy panic, and Bj\u00f6rk broke with precedent by allowing her distributors into the studio to hear work-in-progress for Med\u00falla. \u201cIt was,\u201d she says, \u201clike the end of the world\u201d \u2013 both for the industry and for a musician who guards her integrity as closely as she does.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut afterwards I was like, Er, nothing\u2019s changed. People still wanna make music and people still wanna listen to music.\u201d It was, Bj\u00f6rk concluded, the system itself that was wrong. With the contract-fulfilling Volta (\u201cMy \u2018tribes of the planet\u2019 album!\u201d) behind her, Bj\u00f6rk broke the habit of a lifetime and got hands-on with the business side of things: \u201cI was tired of having the money people decide the model for how your music\u2019s sold without the artist having a say.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the creative scope of Biophilia began to grow, necessitating discussions with Apple in California, National Geographic in New York and various organisations in Iceland, Bj\u00f6rk ended up spending as much time in meeting rooms as she did tapping and swiping her touchscreen. Now, with the fruits of three years\u2019 work about to go public, many are optimistic that Biophilia will pioneer a whole new way of packaging music.
\u201cI\u2019ve just come back from France,\u201d she says, \u201cwhere they were very excitable and saying exactly that. I was like, Thanks for the compliment, but that\u2019s definitely not what I\u2019m trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite its scope, Bj\u00f6rk sees Biophilia as the more humble antidote to 2007\u2019s \u201cvery macho\u201d Volta tour \u2013 her response to a build-up of serious cabin fever.<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed to get out there,\u201d she reflects, \u201cso I put all the bombastic songs from my past together in one show and toured all the big festivals. But by the end of it I was completely depleted of yang energy. All I wanted to do was to plant one little seed that was totally pure and watch it grow.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Bj\u00f6rk, perversely perhaps, Biophilia is a return to purity, simplicity even. She points to a digital clock in the room. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even be able to set that, you know, but touchscreen is back to basics, like picking up this spoon and hitting things with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And with that, she takes the spoon, strikes her tea-cup, the sugar bowl and other random objects. It\u2019s a spontaneous interlude of wonky atonality that brings a beaming smile to Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
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Musical interlude over, Bj\u00f6rk gets up on her feet and orders more coffee (\u201cTwo drinks on the go in case I run out of things to say\u201d). She\u2019s now clearly on the scent, apologising profusely for her \u201cvomit of words\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSince I was a child, I\u2019ve always written my songs while walking outside just inspired by nature and stuff,\u201d she confides. \u201cI\u2019ve never written on a piano or a guitar. I always felt that when you worked on them, you\u2019d end up writing songs like everybody else. I hadn\u2019t realised until this project that nature had been my accompaniment all along.\u201d<\/p>\n
The imminent threat of ecological disaster in her homeland played another key role in the conception of Biophilia. A group of what she calls \u201cinsane venture capitalists\u201d proposed covering the island with aluminium smelters, \u201cso that it might have turned into Frankfurt or something.\u201d Her low-level alternative, one of many proposed by environmental activists, was to build \u201ca touchscreen music school for children\u201d in one of the island\u2019s many abandoned houses. \u201cEach room was to be a song \u2013 water dripping in one, lightning playing the bassline in another, crystals growing in the next room, and as you walked up the stairs, each step would play a note in the scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t happen. Neither did National Geographic\u2019s proposal to make a Biophilia tie-in IMAX documentary, although Bj\u00f6rk hopes they\u2019ll collaborate on something \u201cfor the second stage of Biophilia\u201d. Instead, in summer 2009, together with a small entourage of family and friends, she decamped to Puerto Rico where much of the material for Biophilia was worked up. \u201cWe were there for eight months,\u201d she says. \u201cI did my vocal exercises every day, swam in the ocean and made a pendulum out of bamboo twigs, string and a bucket. We bought organ pipes from eBay. It was all so DIY.\u201d The Caribbean humidity was a tonic for Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s voice, but she did begin to wonder if they\u2019d been away too long. \u201cI realised that my daughter didn\u2019t know some Icelandic children\u2019s songs,\u201d she deadpans. \u201cI was like, No, this is not happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Childlike is a popular descriptor for Bj\u00f6rk, as hackneyed as \u201celfin\u201d, but these days she probably wouldn\u2019t object. Even on this evidence, she\u2019s full of empathy for the young and appreciation of their creative instincts. \u201cWhen I was in music school as a child, I was frustrated because they put so much importance on academic stuff,\u201d she says. \u201cYou know, pick your instrument, rehearse it for 15 years and you might get lucky and join an orchestra. But when kids [aged] between five and seven make those drawings, you wanna frame every picture. Imagine if those kids were writing songs? They\u2019d be incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, Bj\u00f6rk had joked with friends about opening her own music school \u201cwhen this pop thing\u2019s done\u201d. And with iPad now inexorably on the rise, her touchscreen music school idea is suddenly back on the agenda. Put simply, each of the rooms in her proposed \u201cIcelandic music house\u201d could be an app.<\/p>\n
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A screenshot from the Biophilia app<\/p>\n
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Sometimes, Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s proselytising for touchscreen technology can seem over-ardent, though as she reminds herself, \u201cI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s for everyone\u201d. And besides, the holistic, interdisciplinary approach of Biophilia is not without precedent. In a fevered moment of my own, its exploration of the parallels between music, science and nature brought to mind what Wagner termed Gesamtkunstwerk, a union of the arts bound together by a common purpose.<\/p>\n
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An album and a suite of apps, Biophilia (literally \u201ca love of life\u201d) is also an ever-growing multi-media project. Several custom-made instruments, including gamelan\/celeste hybrid the Gameleste, pendulum harps and a Tesla coil that emits wild Dr Frankenstein electric bolts, brought a vaguely Heath Robinson feel to the season of shows premiering Biophilia at this summer\u2019s Manchester International Festival. Eight further city residencies between now and 2014 are planned, each reprising the children\u2019s workshop element that proved such a success in Manchester. There\u2019s a documentary in the making, and a deluxe \u00a3500 \u2018Ultimate Edition\u2019 of Biophilia on the way, complete with a set of tuning forks.<\/p>\n
Beyond her own plans, Bj\u00f6rk has high hopes for iPad-enabled music. \u201cIt\u2019s not my opinion that all bands should make apps,\u201d she says, but she does envisage iPad jams in much the same way that folkies used to sit around a campfire. \u201cAnd,\u201d she adds with her customary spark of positivity, \u201cdownloads are just much more spontaneous,\u201d hinting that she\u2019ll likely be adding to the Biophilia app box as and when she feels like it.
The effort that\u2019s gone into making Biophilia, and the potential future it signposts, has reinvigorated Bj\u00f6rk. And her enthusiasm is infectious, even if one shudders at an imminent onslaught of opportunistic, poorly conceived \u2018app albums\u2019 motivated more by cash than creativity. It will, surely, reorient the album form to reflect the growing dominance of interactive entertainment. But can it hope to ever replace the album?<\/p>\n
It feels churlish to mention it, though there is something I wanted Bj\u00f6rk to know. Days earlier, while sitting in a sun-filled park watching butterflies flutter over flowerbeds, her All Is Full Of Love made the perfect soundtrack. It was a joy-filled reminder of music\u2019s power \u2013 to intensify feeling, to illuminate the moment, to transport \u2013 in a way that no other art form can. Isn\u2019t all this iPad stuff a bit of a distraction? Bj\u00f6rk looks mildly crestfallen.
\u201cWell, I\u2019m happy to hear you say that,\u201d she says, a little less than convincingly, \u201cand if you just wanna buy the CD, you can.\u201d She spent three years on Biophilia, she continues, stressing that over half that time was spent on the music.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s fair enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without diminishing the vision and vitality of Biophilia in all its multi-faceted glory, let\u2019s spare a thought for Biophilia the album. While the app edition heralds the launch of the traditional \u2018album\u2019 into a different dimension, it still feels like a warm-up for the real thing, as much appetiser as application. The full-scale venture into the sublime, I suspect, will demand settling back, finger-sliding the iPad to sleep mode, and cranking the CD player up to 10.<\/p>\n
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This article originally appeared in Issue 216 of MOJO<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Future ShockThe game-changing future of music or Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s folly \u2013 her craziest idea since turning up to the Oscars dressed as a swan? In 2011, Biophilia, her eighth album, was also an iPad app, an interactive, audio-visual journey into the wonders of science, nature and music that grew out of a near career-ending crisis. Baffled? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2060,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions\/2060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}