Crystalline
Bjork
Björk has collaborated with app developers, scientists, writers, inventors, musicians and instrument makers to create a unique multi-media exploration of the universe and its physical forces – particularly those where music, nature and technology meet. The project is inspired by and explores these relationships between musical structures and natural phenomena, from the atomic to the cosmic.
Björk: It was pretty early on. I was reading a book by Oliver Sachs called Musicophilia :) yei and it really inspired me. That must have been two and a half years ago. Because I’m not really good in English, I said, ‘oh wow, [Biophilia] could be a title for the project,’ but ‘Bio’ thinking ‘Nature.’ Later somebody told me it means ‘love of life.’ I was more thinking ‘nature-like’ or ‘morphing into nature.’ My bad sense of English thought it was feeling up nature or something — Biofeelingup.
Stereogum: In the end, how did that tie in with your ideas about music, nature, and technology working together, or interacting together, in some way?
Björk: We used touch screens on the Volta tour and I was so excited by the potential. I didn’t want to just show off again on stage and make flashy noises — I wanted to dig deep and write with it. I could immediately see the potential in the touch screen: I wanted to be the frustrated music teacher and do semi-educational things with these screens and write a song about ten different natural elements. You can have crystals growing and that’s a song; we can have the moon doing its full moon and small moon and that could be a song. I felt like, ‘wow, now you can unite with structures in nature.’
When I was in music school as a kid I would go to the director — When he got bored, he would press that sort of 70’s walkie talkie, and would have me sent up to his office — and I would tell him how he should run his school and he would just laugh. It was that sort of arrogance of youth, when you’re a 9 year old. I was like, “come on, your not giving us enough chances here! We don’t just want to play songs by old dead people! We want to write stuff!” I guess part of this project for me is trying to score some karma points I burnt down back then: If you think you know it all, why don’t you stand up and do it?
I learned musicology in that school for ten years, from 5-15, — after 15 I rebelled and become a punk — I didn’t continue to the next level. [As a kid] I felt it was really weird that music schools behaved like a conveyor belt to make performers for those symphony orchestras: If you were really good and practiced your violin for a few hours a day for 10 years you might be invited to this VIP elite club. For me music was not about that. It is about freedom and expression and individuality and impulsiveness and spontaneity. It wasn’t so Apollonian; it was more Dionysian, especially for kids. Kids draw masterpieces — they’re the best painters ever. I think the same with music: They could totally write amazing music if they just had the right tools. It’s important at that age to set up something … and then maybe afterwards you can go study your violin for 500 hours a week. But at least in the beginning you know about the options. There’s not just major and minor scales, there’s Indonesian scales and Japanese scales and African scales. There’s like 99 scales … and now you can actually get access to all of them with something like Ableton Live. Or, it’s like the piano: White notes are major — its almost fascistic… — and then it’s like there are the black notes, not as good as the white notes.
People from the rock and roll world have felt for years that electronic music had no soul, but now electronic music can not only have soul, but have all the shapes in the world. It was [considered to be] a bit like house music, like LEGOS, but now we can go further and program something like the migration of swallows and that can be the choir section.There are more patterns than you know.
Stereogum: Is this why Biophilia involves classes for children?
Björk: Totally. Basically Manchester is a prototype. We finished our money after the album was ready, so it’s sort of back to punk DIY deals. But we managed just to we had to do a sort of low budget setup in Manchester, which wasn’t really a bad thing: It pushed us; it was liberating, actually. We’re teaching kids two songs a day. The first half of the day they will get crystals — they can touch them and play with them and hear about them from a biologist and they can use the app and the music teacher will teach them about structure in music and then they can write their own little song and take it home on a USB. Then, after lunch, there will be another song– the one about lightning — and they will learn about electricity and static and energy. That particular song is about arpeggios, so then a music teacher will teach them about arpeggios. They will have the iPads. Each song is an app and they are plugged directly into a pipe organ or a gamelan celeste or a pendulum or a harp sort of thing so I was trying to mix together the most exciting of electronics where you can use cutting edge technology to do more impulsive sort of like right brain sort of stuff for kids but then you could plug it with a sort of most famous acoustic instruments that man has made. We’ll have people coming from other cities that we’ll hopefully be traveling to… Hopefully we can expand this educational side.
I’m gonna try to break up the touring thing so I’m maybe going to do two or three cities a year and I’ll have a few months off in between and then I’m going to tailor make each city around the building we get. I want to get into buildings where I could stay for a month. So obviously, you can’t go to normal concert venues because that is not meant for that. We’re trying to go to science museums. We’re saying we will teach the kids for free on our days off if you provide the location and you can make something out of it: Bring the crystals and the viruses, the DNA and lightning … some collaborative sort of thing. I think it works best like that.
Stereogum: I remember a couple of years ago when we were doing the Dirty Projectors project with Housing Works you mentioned you were maybe signing to National Geographic. How is that working? Is the record coming out via National Geographic?
Björk: I was off all deals after Volta — that’s a really exciting position to be in. Then National Geographic offered me [a deal] and I was like, “Whaaaaat, so I could be labelmates with sharks and lemurs?”
And then the iPad came out — ...I was so excited about all of these apps. We had two years of work behind us of a script so the songs were ready so the rooms… and also the interaction was ready so were thinking “oh it’s going to be a museum soon and the kids are going to come hold it” or whatever so the music room that became scenes they were like actually to make it an app was easy, it was like nothing. Because we had the script, we had the songs, we had decided what the interaction was going to be, we decided on the natural element and we had done two years of work.
Then [my manager] Derek was the brave one: He emailed the top ten best sellers of apps and asked them would you do this project with Björk or whatever and some of them emailed back and said yes and I was like “are you insane?” They came to Iceland around Halloween and were here for a few days. We went to this small restaurant. We would stay there in the daytime for a few days — because they aren’t open in the daytime — and we were just sort of brainstorming (which is a new thing for me because musicians don’t usually brainstorm). It was so much fun because they were just like total science nerds and we would be having dinners talking about secret like moth societies with seven members that meet once a year … and I was just in heaven. Also, they were from all different countries, and were all different kinds of ages (some of them were like 18 year olds and some of them were like 65)...
Stereogum: So it’s self-released?
Björk: Yeah, until I get bored. I have a feeling it’s gonna be probably like two albums. We’ve spent three years setting this up. So much time of this went to going to meetings and going through…oh we’re doing a music house…oh we’re doing a film, you know, so now I would really like to just focus on the music. It’s ideal, the fact that it can be spontaneous and you don’t have to wait for another three years to release something. I’m quite excited by that, especially after making records all these years. I’m going to play in Iceland in the Autumn, but then in January I could write a song and just add it in you know? So, I would like online music distribution to at least have that they should be able to do that right?
Stereogum: I agree. So would you do physical versions of these, too, if you were releasing them as an ongoing project? Or is it too early to tell? Like 7”’s or whatever…
Björk: We were gonna do it [just online] … I was like, OK, it’s a new era like reinventing everything, but then Derek told me: “Listen, most people who by your albums actually buy CDs.” So actually just two weeks ago we just signed to Nonesuch, but just for one album. They’re a cool label and they seem very sympathetic to what I want to do. They’re really into the apps and the semi-educational thing. I think maybe after this album we’ll be ready to go. I mean we’ll see… that’s the good thing about this: You can just take it as it comes…
Stereogum: As far as the instruments that were made for Biophilia…You talked about some before: How the gravity would pull the pendulum… How important were they for the Biophilia concept? Were you looking for very specific sounds that you couldn’t find on anything else? Or was it conceptual?
Björk: Well, as mentioned, we started off pretty utopian, and then, actually, the pipe organ ended up being a very sensible solution. It’s probably the least utopian idea. It’s basically a pipe organ that just receives MIDI, so that’s it really, it just means that if you have an iPAD — or actually I wrote a lot of the songs on a Nintendo game controller, that was before the ipad came out... But I wanted the sounds. We tried la robotic gamelan, which basically is a normal gamelan, but with robotic hammers. You have it in a big room and you could draw a circle or whatever and then the gamelan would play the circle. But it just didn’t… I think it was amazing, the robotic gamelan, but it just wasn’t right for this project. I’m such an old rock and roll dog, and I’m just so used to touring, that I kept thinking: “How are you going to put that on stage?” I like acoustic instruments that are very very acoustic, but how can you keep up with the energy of the electronics, you know? If you have like a bunch of gamelan instruments thrown around the stage, you’re just gonna lose all the energy…
I had an old Celeste in Iceland… I was like, “How about we just get that and we replace the silver notes with bronze notes, the same as the gamelan?” We didn’t know who could do it, and then the organ maker in Iceland who also made the pipe organ for me, was like “Oh! I could do that.” We also found this guy who does cymbals. We were talking to him about cymbals because of some other idea and he was like “Oh I can make those bronze notes.” So he cast all those bronze notes and he flew to Iceland.
Stereogum: Isn’t it 30 feet tall or something?
Björk: Well it was in the beginning, and I was really worried because I never wanted it to be that big you know so I was like oh, I think some of my ideas were a bit esoteric, so I was like “oh, I want this pendulum to be next to me like he is my friend or something and I’d push him and he plays a bassline and I sing with him and it’s amazing.” And then I gave him the song I’d already written and then he said “to play that you need more than one pendulum, you actually need 38 pendulums.” And I was like “WHAT?!” and I was like, “Oh that’s a shame and then hes like because its 38 arms it needs to be like 30 feet tall otherwise they’ll hit each other.” And I was like, “Damn ok, oh because they’re 38 and they’re 30 feet tall they need to be made out of aluminum.” And I was like “WHAT?” and “because it’s aluminum it has to be motorized” and I was just like “Ok…this is not going the right way.” And then he’d worked on it for a whole year so it was really really difficult.
Björk: I’m trying to get into the twitter thing because I’m just not really good at it. I thought I would be more up for it with this project, because it’s sort of semi-educational, and the frustrated music teacher could come out, so its not so much, I don’t feel like I’ve talked so much about me….but it hasn’t kicked in it. I want to, because part of me wants to tell the world that musicology is not something for the chosen few and its simple, it’s like the alphabet, it’s easy. And especially connected with sound and simple physics because that’s how sound functions, it functions like gravity or its simple you know but yea maybe we haven’t really been doing a good job with being online and blogging. I’m a bit rubbish with that.
Stereogum: It sounds like it. Because there was also the photo on twitter of just Michel Gondry on the clapboard or whatever, that popped up too, which is sort of nice, it feels more natural. It doesn’t feel like a press campaign, it feels more like here’s something we just did and we’re just throwing it out there. Which maybe fits with the project.
Björk: Yeah, we’re going to try to do more like that. We’ve been busy, we couldn’t fit stuff in… But also, it’s problematic because everything leaks so quickly.
Stereogum: Not gallery installations or anything like that…
Björk: Not at this stage, but it could be, I mean, some of the science museums we’ve been talking to, like the one in Tokyo, because the project is so like, I don’t know what it’s like, sort of a jellyfish … it’s very easy, that it goes from being a music house, to a film, to an app box, so when someone in Tokyo says “I have this amazing room where we have this screen which we never use and we’d love to do something on it.” Can you do part of your projectof your project there, I’m gonna say yes because I’m much more adaptable then I was before because this beast sort of has two hundred arms and it’s really easy to just say “yea it’s just box 19” and because im gonna have more time, but that’s just like a good soundsystem. But, I can imagine some people calling that an installation.
Stereogum: Michel did a video for “Crystalline.” Did he do a video for every song, or just for the one song?
Björk: Well, so far he’s just done it for one song. That was fun. After trying to get a whole movie made and financed and struggling with his Hollywood schedule, certainly doing a video was really easy. So, yeah, I don’t know, we’re just going to improvise. I feel the apps are videos. Is he going to do videos? I was like, “Oh, that’s so over.” But I guess it isn’t. But at least Michel was totally involved in the whole project so he totally gets it. Only doing three minutes was easy. We’re just gonna see how it goes. It’s actually kind of a liberating feeling because we’ve sort of…when it comes out, we’ve done all the apps, we’ve done everything, and if it does well, we can do more videos, and if it doesn’t do well, we don’t do more videos, and I get to do new songs, so its taken just its own life and it’s going to grow. The way it’s been set up, it can go many many different ways. I’m excited about it. Everybody’s worked their asses off for three years and for not a lot of money, so I feel a little bit responsible about telling the world about it.
Stereogum: How much is the way you’re releasing the album, and the way you guys joined up with the programmers to make a collective around the album, how much of this is a reaction to the music business? You know how Radiohead releases an album and says pay what you want, and Trent Reznor, released an album for free, etc. Is any of it a comment on the music industry or did it just happen this way?
Björk: I think it’s a bit of both. I think the way this project, evolved, like I said, it became its own thing. Like I said, I was very influenced by what was happening in Iceland and also the fact that I was off all deals, you know? I guess for me it’s more of a reaction. … And like, “Bills, Bills, Bills” by Destiny’s Child sounds amazing on an organ — part of it is just sort of trying to take this elitist thing of classical notation and blur it…This is a really long answer to your music industry question. I guess in autumn 2008 I was also at a point where I had lost my voice on the last tour, so on every level it was a new beginning for me, I had to learn new voice technique, eat new food to get rid of throat candida and get rid of a nodule on my vocal chords. So for me to address the music industry thing it was not really like fuck you, it was more just like, what is functional?
Stereogum: If someone buys the CD on Nonesuch and doesn’t have the apps do you think they’re still experiencing the album the way you want them to experience it?
Björk: I tried to do that. I hope this doesn’t come across as being arrogant, but I’ve seen so many interactive music galleries and museums, and you walk in some space, and some noise starts or whatever, and obviously being the music nerd that I am, I would be like, would this song sound good on your home stereo? So, in many cases it doesn’t, and because many times it’s not made for that, that’s totally fine, not all things have to be on your Walkman or iPod to count as good music. There are all these other situations that work fine.
If somebody would hear this album in ten years, buy it in a secondhand store, it would be the same as my other albums. You wouldn’t need the App to appreciate it. This, for me, is a Bjork album; it’s not a bunch of generated music, ambient wishy-washy stuff. I guess it is like a private joke or something. I enjoy to take on my own musical taboos. For example when I did, Medulla, it was taboo for me: A capella music, the worst music on earth, let’s tackle that! Then on Volta : Oh, the worst music in the world is feminist political music, you know? Then I went there: “Declare Independence”! Now I’m taking on generative music, that’s all in pastel colors, it’s kind of superficial. It’s me doing that. It’s like a joke between me and myself, you know? It just seems like a recipe for disaster to do an App song — and I enjoy that challenge!
I tried to have each song as emotionally different as possible. [The song] ‘DNA’ is about rhythm, but I also wanted it to be about the emotional, my relationship with my ancestors . That was just as important, to prove science nerds wrong, to unite the scientific and the emotional. ‘Moon’ is very melancholic and about rebirth and the lunar cycles but it’s also just about the math of a full moon. [I wanted the music to] weave seamlessly into science, a natural element, and musicology. Our times seem to be so much about redefining where we are physical and where we’re not. For me, it is really exciting to take the cutting edge technology and take it as far as it can get virtually, use it to describe/control the musicology or the behavior of raw natural elements, and then plug it with a sound source which is the most acoustic one there is — like gamelan and pipe organ. So you get the extremes: Very virtual and very physical. In that way you shift the physicality.
Link:
http://stereogum.com/744502/stereogum-qa-bjork-talks-biophilia/top-stories/lead-story/
