FANCY SPECIAL
BJÖRK
WILL TEACH YOU!
L
ook. We’ll come right out and say it. Björk Guðmundsdóttir is a genius, an innovator and a visionary. Her new record, ‘Biophilia’ is a feat; it marks her best work in at least a decade and everything surrounding it— apps, graphics, concepts, music schools (!)—reeks of the future in such an inspiring and novel way that it makes all other musicians look sorta bad, really. You are much more interested in reading what she has to say about things, so this intro will end now. And if you want more, you may read a far longer version of this conversation on our fancy Airwaves website. I’ve been listening to ‘Biophilia’ for a few days now, and the apps, educational aspect and concept were just explained to me by your assistant. I am stunned. All I can think of asking is: what is this? What did you do? WTF? I’ve found the simplest way to describe the project is by talking about the touchscreen aspect. Whenever I make an album, I am never quite sure what I am doing, then when I’m done I sit down and try to make a little sense. And it wasn’t until after I had done a fair number of interviews post-the Manchester
It’s changing how we interact with a computer... Yes, that’s really it. That’s what the project is about in short. I was mapping how I think about music theory, how I write songs, and how that could transfer to that new process; because I have never been able to write songs like a troubadour with a piano or a guitar [retches]. The idea was a little along the lines of: “If I were making my version of an acoustic guitar to write music with like a folk singer, what would I put in that? What do I put on the touchscreen? And I immediately thought of nature and its structures, I started tapping into that... Wait, I want to back up. Learning music theory and music, I felt it was too academic. You didn’t get to experiment and find your voice and your style. It wasn’t about the individual so much as mass-training conveyor belts of kids into playing for the symphony orchestra. “If you practice for several hours a day for fifteen years, you might be in the symphony” was sort of the carrot. That’s cool and great, I love watching classical performers and I admire them, but for kids who love music, there are a lot of other things that are important. Like composing music. The pictures that young kids
“I always assumed I’d be a music teacher when I grew up. Then this whole pop music adventure happened and I’ve really liked that.” performances that I had simplified the idea and concept enough to talk about it properly. And I found the key point was the touch screen. I had used touchscreens on the ‘Volta’ tour, in the form of the Reactable and Lemur devices, and when I started this new project in 2008 I wanted to continue using them for writing music. So I thought: “How would you write music on such a device?” This lead me to mapping how I view my songs in terms of structure, and that sent me right back to my time studying music in grade school, what I liked and disliked about that education. And how I thought about writing music. This was my mental process. Then, the touchscreen has brought along some revolutions.
Words Haukur S. Magnússon Photography Emma Birkett
draw, you want to hang each and every one of them on the wall, because they are all brilliant. And I thought: “If kids could write music like they draw those pictures, without being brilliant violin players or whatever...” Rhythm is important Indeed, your assistant just showed me a clip of children in Manchester [where Björk had her first ‘Biophilia’ event] playing music through your apps... were you making the instrument, or machine, you’ve always needed? Yes, a little. I was being selfish, really, making the sort of discipline or course I would have liked to study in grade school, the one I never got to attend. “Why moan about missing it, why not create one now?” I thought. Maybe it’s a way for more intuitive songwriting? I have written a lot of melodies while walking outside, thinking of rhythms. Rhythm has always been important to me; when in The Sugarcubes and Kukl I often worked with Sigtryggur [Baldursson, drummer of both bands, extraordinaire in his own right]—we’d Continues on page 8