Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.09.2014, Qupperneq 12
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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 14 — 2014
“In the beginning, the
stuff that you already
know doesn’t interest
you. You’re attracted by
the magnetic force of the
things you don’t know.”
She hasn’t done a press day for three
years. The last time seems a long time
ago, back when Biophilia was being un-
veiled to the world—the album app was
new, the Manchester International Festi-
val had just premiered the live show, and
the music media was palpably reeling as
writers tried to comprehend the scope of
the project.
This process of talking about an al-
bum is when Björk’s analysis of a new
piece of work can begin. “It usually isn’t
until afterwards when you sort out what
is what,” she says. “You’ve handed in the
recording, and then you do the interviews
when it’s wrapped up with a bow on it.
Suddenly you have a lot of cappuccinos
and become an expert on it, and pretend
you know everything about yourself.”
It’s hard to imagine how someone
could start with a blank page, and end
with a towering construction like the
Biophilia universe. How much of it was
planned, and how much grew during
the process? “Well, in the beginning, you
just have no clue,” she says. “In the be-
ginning, the stuff that you already know
doesn’t interest you—you’re attracted
by the magnetic force of the things you
don’t know.”
She pauses to take a drink, before con-
tinuing: “To contradict myself complete-
ly, I could also say that in the beginning,
I kinda know what I’m about to do. It’s a
mixture of intention, and the unknown,
and probably more stuff too. The people I
have a relationship with at the time mat-
ter. I don’t just mean boyfriends, although
obviously that matters a lot, but the other
musicians you feel connected to. Both on-
stage, like a drummer or somebody who
programmes beats or whatever, but also
engineers—people like that are artists in
their own right.”
Three years on, the resulting audio-
visual feast has become iconic. After
touring the world, the final live presenta-
tion was recorded for a recently released
concert film, ‘Biophilia Live,’ shot at the
end of the show’s run at Alexandria Pal-
ace in London.
“As a musician, I love to hear bands at
both the beginning and the end of a tour,”
Björk says, “but on this particular tour,
it was maybe better at the end. I get to
know people and figure out where they
shine most, and you can encourage that,
and decide on which songs work best. For
example, my relationship with Manu, the
percussionist, grew over time. I pulled
out an old song of mine called “One Day”
and he really flourished on it. Little
things like that—we were able to arrange
“Possibly Maybe” to work with the Tesla
Coil, because we’d spent the time getting
to know each other.”
Growing together
Björk surrounds herself with talented
people, all of whom contribute to re-
alising the vision of each new album.
Biophilia was no exception, as she was
often quite literally surrounded on the
stage by a choir comprising 24 young
Icelandic women.
“The choir gave so much to the tour,”
says Björk, sparkling with affection, “not
just in their musicianship, but with their
energy and enthusiasm. They were like a
slice of Iceland wherever we went—from
the concerts themselves to the other
parts, you know, like the difficult airport
journeys—they were troopers.”
“They got better and better, too,” she
smiles. “It’s tough to do what they did.
Some of them have sung together since
they were six, but they had to learn all
over again, to sing in microphones. They
were doing chords that are really com-
plex, very dissonant, sometimes onstage
with questionable festival monitors, with
loud beats in the background. They had
to hear the chord of a chorus coming
through all that noise and attune to it—
they got really good at it.”
The final show was a long time in the
making, with daily four-hour practises
over a period of four months. “I wanted
the performance to become intuitive,”
Björk says, “so they learned every bit by
heart, to move from their note-reading
brain to that more impulsive side. By the
time the show began, they could sing it in
their sleep.”
This long process of rehearsal came
with some welcome surprises. “One thing
they could do,” Björk enthuses, “after
singing so long together, was that they’d
be singing a chord maybe with five notes
and three girls in each note—and then
suddenly mid-chord, two would jump
to another note—like if one note wasn’t
strong they’d balance it. And it would
sound much better, and I’d stop and say,
‘What did you just do!’ And they’d just
look at me as if to say, ‘I dunno!’ That’s
one reason we worked on it for so long,
because I’d write those intuitive changes
into the arrangements.”
Emotional unison
But filming a concert at the end of a tour
was not without challenges for Björk.
She has always poured her whole self
into each perfor-
mance, and the ad-
dition of festival
dates between city
residencies proved
too much. Several
South American
and European dates
were cancelled as
a result of a nodule
on her vocal cords, and the final Biophilia
show came at the end of a challenging
schedule. “I had to deal with the opposite
of Manu and the girls,” she explains. “At
the beginning of a tour my voice is really
good, but by the end I’m a little scruffy,
my notes are not as clear. So I was a lit-
tle worried about my voice. There were
definitely shows on the tour where I had
more flexibility and I could improvise
more at that particular gig.”
“But what I love about playing
shows,” she continues, “is that nobody
knows exactly what it is that makes one
show better than another, like when you
walk offstage feeling like you didn’t de-
liver as much or get to be as generous as
you wanted. And it’s not about technical
stuff; it’s some sort of emotional unison
or merge between the musicians and the
audience. I don’t know what it is, nobody
knows. But at that gig, we walked off-
stage and we knew it was good one.”
It hasn’t always
worked out so well,
she says. “I remember
when we came off-
stage after the 'Volta'
gig that we recorded,
and it was definitely
not the best one. If you
took all the 'Volta' gigs
and rated them out of
ten, that one was like a 6. But if you rated
all the Biophilia gigs, that one was an 8.5.
You can’t ask for more really, so when I
walked offstage I was like 'yessss!'”
Double take
But such issues aside, Björk remains reso-
lute about her boundaries on how much
post-production should take place on live
recordings. “I heard rumours, back when
I was in The Sugarcubes, of bands who
came offstage and went and re-recorded
all the vocals for live albums,” she says,
her eyes widening in faux-shock. “To me,
this was not good at all, and I said ‘I will
never do that, I will never replace one
note! I will never auto-tune anything!’
So the only thing we got to do afterwards
was adjusting the levels, the mixing.”
Her adopted way of reconciling
her spontaneity and perfectionism is
to do live retakes, which means telling
ticket-holders that some songs might be
performed twice. “For the film, we did
three songs twice,” she admits. “Because
the stage is in the round, I have to have
a cordless mic, which sounds way more
digital than the normal Shure 58. So two
songs I repeated to sing with that mic—
the ones with just me and the choir. It’s
nerdy and ridiculous, I know, so when I
explained that to the crowd, they just
laughed and thought I was stupid and
gave me a break.”
The other re-do came from the inclu-
sion of inventor Henry Dagg’s Sharpsi-
chord—a stringed instrument so large
that it couldn’t reasonably come on the
Biophilia tour, instead making cameo ap-
pearances at the first and last shows. “We
hadn’t been able to bring the instrument
with us,” Björk explains, “so we’d been
performing that track differently for sev-
enty shows. The parts were in a different
order, and we all just kind of looked at
each other, and fucked it all up, and said,
‘Let’s try that again.’ My inner perfec-
tionist came out.”
The decision paid off: the result is a
film nothing short of spectacular, like
capturing lightning in a bottle. And so,
even as it draws to a close, the Biophilia
project continues to teem and flourish,
taking on a life of its own, and preparing
to travel the world once again.
News | Media eventsBjörk | On Biophilia
Sitting upstairs at Iðnó, pouring out a cup of coffee in a fetching fluorescent yellow en-
semble, an animated Björk is expressing how pleased and surprised she is that people
still want to talk about her work. “I spoke to someone earlier who had been online re-
searching all the Biophilia set lists and comparing them,” smiles Björk, “and I was like,
‘respect!’ It’s crazy that people actually still care, or can be bothered.”
Tying A Ribbon On BiophiliaWords by John RogersPhotos provided by One Little Indian
INTER
VIEW
See a list of future screenings at
ww.biophiliathefilm.com.