Singer Björk talks cheerfully and at length. Eleven years ago we met inManchester where Björk presented a musical project about nature. Now theconversation takes place via Zoom. Björk is more accessible. Maybe because wecan’t see each other (“my camera is broken”) or because she’s at home inReykjavik and the sun is shining (“unusual”). Or because Björk Guðmundsdóttir(1965, Reykjavik) has had a “rooting period” that she says has done her good.
Rooting has been more or less forced over the past two years. After decades oftouring and coming up with new music, she stopped her activities at thebeginning of 2020 due to corona, in the middle of a European tour. Theelaborate show with orchestra members and moving projection screens was closedand Björk started a different way of life.
A life with time for friends and family, walking every day and listening topodcasts – especially about psychiatrist Carl Jung – meeting the only tenpeople in her ‘bubble’.
And there was an opportunity to sharpen the album fossora , a next phase inBjörk’s search for new musical possibilities. That search started when she wastwelve, when she recorded her first album with covers. After that she becameradical punk and then opted for an exuberant pop style, as the singer of theband Sugarcubes.
Her solo career began in 1993, with the album debut. Björk largely came upwith the music herself, incorporating her love for dance and movement intostuttering beats and angular melodies. In the wake of the house movement, shefollowed the need for sophisticated dance music.
But Björk worked according to her own ideas: her performances were carefullystaged, she designed stylized sets and stood on stage in bulbous colorfulcostumes.
She became an example to others, and not just musicians. Because Björk showedthat you can make your own music with contrarian rhythms and an emphaticIcelandic accent and get recognition too. In 2000 she played the lead role inthe movie Dancer In The Dark by the Danish director Lars von Trier, forwhich she received the Best Actress Award at Cannes. Björk was everywhere.
In the new century her music became more avant-garde. As a producer she worksaccording to strict concepts, forging elements from classical music withgabber and electronics. Björk is no longer a pop singer, she is a soundarchitect.
Like being in a cave
The fanatical love for music and its possibilities stems from her childhood,she says. Her parents always played records, they had no books or TV at home.Over the past few years, she felt the importance of music even more intensely.“For me, songs are a natural companionship, more than people,” she laughs fora moment. “I find the confrontation with a room full of people with whom youhave to have a conversation astonishing. A song is a more naturalenvironment.”
A song can feel like a cave, an excavated space in the ground. And that is thesecurity she seeks. That’s why she named the album fossora a self-inventedfeminine form of the Latin ‘fossor’, graver.
“The beats and rhythms I programmed were supposed to make you feel like you’rein a cave,” she says. “Deep away, where the ground trembles and rumbles.”
I can’t wait for my voice to get even lower>> Björk
This is how she stepped from the enchanting high sounds of the previous album_Utopia_ (2017), moving on to a deep earthiness. ‘Low’ was created by the useof bass clarinets. Six, no less. She had to plan and adjust for a long time tomake sure the bass tones wouldn’t get in each other’s way.
“That’s why it was good that we had the time. We rehearsed and recorded in mycabin in the mountains. There we all slept, cooked, got stuck with the car inthe snow and through trial and error we found the way to use six basses atonce. That is the advantage of Iceland. In studios in European cities you haveto come in with a ready-made score and you have one hour to record.”
Her voice is also lower these days. “After fifty years of singing my voice haschanged, I have lost a bit in height, but I can get more bass notes. Awesome,can’t wait for it to get even lower. About like this!” She bursts into hoarsesinging, like a female Tom Waits.
First dance, then talk
In the new songs, her vocals wander between the sounds of drum, clarinet andelectronics, which seem to slide like large blocks and sometimes clash withthe dance rhythms of Gabber Modus Operandi, an Indonesian electronic duo knownfor their radical version of Dutch ‘gabber’.
In her home in Reykjavik, she has hosted parties with friends in recent years,says Björk. “We ate together in a restaurant and then went home to listen tomusic on my large speakers. First quiet, then dance music, and finally we puton Gabber Modus Operandi, jumping up and down like in a catharsis, for aboutfifteen minutes.
“At eleven o’clock everyone left except the one who had a problem, with loveor something. We put on some sad music and talked for a while. I thought thatwas a great order. Before Covid, you talked first and danced at three in themorning. But then I’m too tired, I’d rather turn it around, dance first, thentalk.”
That’s what the new album is about, she says, about your home as a dancefloor, as a psychiatrist, as a space for the love of music. on fossora Thereare also songs about Björk’s mother Hildur Rúna, the environmental activistwho once went on a hunger strike to stop the construction of a dam in Iceland.Rúna passed away in 2018. In ‘Sorrowful Soil’ her daughter lovingly names herlife force, in ‘Ancestress’ she sings about the still present influence: “You see with your own eyes, but hear with your mother’s”.
Björk recommends listening to this album on the largest possible speakers, andnot on headphones. “Sit in your easy chair in front of the box, turn up thevolume and let yourself be surrounded by a sea of sound.”
That’s especially true for “Victimhood,” she says. The idea for this song camefrom the podcast about Jung. As a result, Björk delved into his ideas aboutpsychological archetypes, especially those of the ‘victim’. “There are aboutfifty types of victims, according to Jung. People who are captivated byconspiracy theories is one, they think they are being chased. I wanted to behonest about it, when do I feel like a victim?”
First she was honest in her diary, then in the lyrics. “My victimhood arisesin my work, when people come together, or in my family and group of friends.Sometimes there is no harmony between people. Then I do my best to bring backthe harmony. I sacrifice my own wishes and interests for the benefit of thegroup, resulting in self-pity.”
The moaning clarinets here express self-pity (“I hate that emotion. In myselfand in others”). Björk arranged them in twisting loops to evoke the sensationof quicksand. “You sink, sink, sink, and don’t get out because you thinkyou’re so pathetic.” That she wants to deal with this feeling is apparent fromthe words: ” Out of victimhood, here I go now.”
After walking in Icelandic nature in sweatpants, it is now time for majorproductions and performances, in venues from Paris to Chile. At the moment,Björk is preparing for the release of her album, making videos and devisingsets for the tour that will start soon. She still loves the extravagant style.In the enchanting ‘underwater’ clip accompanying the new single ‘Atopos’ shedances on a homemade coral reef, dressed as a soft green anemone.
But today she doesn’t have to think about anything. „I am looking forward tothis afternoon, when I go to my house for a few days, outside with my family.It’s ten degrees. We call that warm here.”