Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.12.2016, Page 32

The R
eykjavík G
rapevine
Iceland A
irw
aves Special 20
16
32
All That Shines And Shivers
A journey into the ever-expanding universe of Björk
Words Parker Yamasaki
Photo Santiago Felipe

In Björk’s ideal fantasy life she
spends all of her time writing
music, cued by the cycles of the
moon. “When the new moon
comes, I’d go under, like a sub-
marine,” she explains, motion-
ing up and down with her arms.
“On a full moon it all comes out.
Then I’d descend back down
toward the new moon. What-
ever happens between two full
moons is enough material for a
song. Between two full moons
you’re a different enough per-
son that the songs will always
be different. It seems like a nat-
ural cycle.”
Of course, life isn’t so exact.
Her most recent album, ‘Vuln-
icura’, was leaked two months
in advance of its release date.
“When ‘Vulnicura’ was leaked,
me and James [Merry] looked at
each other and were just like,
okay, let’s surrender,” she says.
“Let’s just let it do its thing.”
That attitude of surrender
has been consistent in this al-
bum, from the writing of the
opening lines to the planning of
performances. ‘Vulnicura’ was
written rapidly in the wake of a
searing divorce—by no means
attuned to the tides of the
moon. “I’ve been trying to ride
this beast ‘Vulnicura’ and just
be true to it,” Björk explains,
“so it’s been very improvised. I
think it suits the subject matter
to present it this way. It is a nice
counterpoint to the severity of
the contents.”
The organic development of
the work itself has carried into
her tour and into the accompa-
nying virtual reality exhibition,
Björk Digital. “I’m at a place
in my life where I’m really en-
joying not making plans,” she
says. “Each album I’ve done,
I’ve toured less and less. Part
of what I’m enjoying about this
Björk Digital exhibition is that it
changes from month to month.
There is no master plan.”
Tune with a view
2007’s ‘Volta’ and, especially,
2011’s ‘Biophilia’ plunged Björk
into the world of programming
and app creation, which evolved
into a fascination with virtual
reality. The content of ‘Vulnicu-
ra’ is so physically invasive, Björk
explains, that it takes something
like a VR experience to display
the power that she herself felt in
the music. The track “Notget,” for
instance—whose completed VR
form will premier with the ex-
hibition in Reykjavík—“is about
having a heart wound, sewing it
up yourself, and then starting to
somersault and tumble into the
sky,” Björk says. “In a music vid-
eo that would look too simplistic,
but with a tool like VR the person
listening to the song is sewing
up his or her own chest and som-
ersaulting and flying through
the sky. That’s pretty powerful.
It matches ‘Vulnicura’.”
Since the beginnings of her
career Björk’s music has had a
visual—even visceral—pres-
ence. Her second solo album
‘Post’ was accompanied by mu-
sic videos from Michel Gondry
and Spike Jonze. In 1999 Chris
Cunningham famously brought
to life the love story between