BJÖRK ON WHAT SHE HAS BEEN UP TO THIS YEAR, AND NOT JINXING IT
-What have you been up to this year?
I am working on a project that I started over a year ago and has grown a bit in the process. It’s gotten quite large in scope, actually, so nothing will probably come of it until next year or the year after.
But it is what most of my year has been devoted to, and it will see the light of day next year or the year after. This is why I haven’t been talking to the media this year; I’ve learned a rhythm over the last twenty years. I enter an introspective mode when I am working, and then I switch to ‘extrovert’ when the music is released and needs to be promoted and toured. Actually, all this action over the last two weeks has left me scared that I am getting too extroverted in the middle of my introvert process, that I might not be able to enter it again.
Let’s talk then. What are these projects?
The first one to appear is the one I made with Dirty Projectors. It’s an EP called ‘Mount Wittenberg Orca’ that’s being sold on-line [
www.mountwittenbergorca.com] and all the proceeds are going to creating international marine protected areas, in cooperation with the National Geographic society.
I had been talking to them before.
The music website Stereogum organised a tribute to my album 'Post', where different musicians recorded covers of the album’s songs. And one of the participating bands was Dirty Projectors, and they wrote a really nice treatise on how my music had influenced them. Stereogum put David and I in touch, and we were e-mailing back and forth. Then they released ‘Rise Above’, the Black Flag record, and I fell in love with it. Especially what David was doing with the voices. And he had been talking about how he was inspired by Medúlla. We kept on e-mailing, sending each other notes and ideas and vocal processing software tips; it soon transpired that both of us were total vocal geeks.
Anyway. It happened. And it’s been great, the whole process. There was so much positive energy, and the collaboration was really fertile. Hats off to all of them! It could have been so complicated, me with my world and they with theirs. But it wasn’t, not at all.
I feel a certain resonance with their generation of Americans. For some reason I have more in common with them musically than my own generation. Some musicians have mentioned Medúlla to me, and there seems to be an upswing in acapella music, which I am really enjoying. When I was in England, singing was all but illegal in the circles I moved in, with the whole Warp scene and so on.
I think these are exciting times, and I am really thankful for getting to observe this generation making its way in music, and getting to interact with its members. When I first started dividing my time between Reykjavík and New York back in the early 2000s, I could not at all relate to what was going on there. I was all nostalgic, shopping music off Bleep.com and thinking about England. And it’s just so great, what’s happened since. The difference between New York in 2010 and 2000 is vast. I guess it’s just closer to my personal musical tastes. People like Antony [Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons] and Joanna Newsom and Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective. It’s all music that I’m really enjoying.
-And you are actively interacting with it now, in the form of your collaboration with Dirty Projectors
Yes. I feel this is very fertile and giving. The fact that David has talked about my music inspiring him and then I just walk into the studio and tell him back: “I am ready to be your instrument. I trust you, and I will obey.” There is a healthy rotation there. Trust. They were so creative in the studio, and the mood was just right. I have the feeling that they’ve only just begun making great records; that they have many to come.
-Why do you think you connect so well with this generation of Americans?
I have a homemade theory about this... The same year I moved to the US, Bush took over the White house and stayed there for eight years. I used to think it didn’t matter who was President, but now I know different. It matters. I can imagine a similar situation as punk was being born in the UK during the Thatcher era. I wasn’t that politically involved then, but now I observe that Bush taking over spurred a certain contingent of people to retreat to nature. There was so much anger in America, from people who didn’t support Bush and his policies, who didn’t feel at home in the mainstream. So much anger and a need for something new. I think it’s no coincidence that Britney Spears and pop stars like her reigned over the Bush year. They’re not exactly ‘organic’...
All the while, this underground was brewing, an underground of people who yearn for organic things, for connecting with nature. Eight years pass, and these people start gaining a following, moving up from the underground. People like Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective, which would have been written off as hippie remnants a decade earlier. People started thinking: there must be other ways.
Anyway, this is my homemade theory.
And I come from a country that is very nature connected. When I was at their age, Iceland didn’t have banksters or corporate Vikings, no one was planning to build five aluminium smelters. It was all very organic and in close connection to nature, maybe with similar emphases as this generation is now making. I am raised in that climate, so maybe that’s why I relate to them.
-Working on that EP was obviously a great experience, but how do you feel about the results? Do you like the album?
I need to listen to it. I last heard it while it was being mixed, and I haven’t heard it since. I need to download it... Things have just been so crazy with this Magma thing, but I really want to find a time to listen to it on a nice stereo, in a car or something. Listening in a car is always nice.
I am really happy with it, though, and proud of it.
When we initially performed this project in the Housing Works we had only practiced it two times, it was very spontaneous and fun. When the girls started doing their thing, with their voices, I jumped and had to be careful not to scream with excitement. It was like a new World Record in acapella. I was really in awe, and honoured to get to be a sort of vocal ‘old aunt’ that was invited to the acapella party, so to speak.
-You’re appearing as a guest on albums by Antony and Ólöf Arnalds. You haven’t really collaborated with many artists like this—outside of your own albums anyway—in past years. Is there a reason why it’s happening now all of the sudden?
Actually, these three projects that I’m appearing on in 2010—Dirty Projectors, Ólöf Arnalds and Antony—they aren’t connected at all. But I was wondering about it. Maybe it’s because I’m older now and, as the oldest of three brothers and three sisters, it is natural for me to assume the role of the oldest sibling. Maybe a new period in my life has begun? I used to always be the youngest, like in the Sugarcubes, but maybe I am more comfortable with being the oldest. I always tell the boys of Sigur Rós that I am their old, proud aunt, so it is a role that maybe comes naturally to me.
With Ólöf, I really get energized from hanging around with her. She has heaps of creativity surrounding her, and the energy is infectious. It’s exciting. For that project, I really didn’t mean to butt in like that, but she played me a song and as soon as I heard it, a vocal to go with it popped in my head. I didn’t tell her about it, I thought it was a really tacky thing to do, but when I heard the track for a second time the vocal part jumped out again.
So I told her. I said: “I have this vocal part in my head, and if you want to record it, I’ll be happy to sing it. I’ll totally understand if you decide to not use it in the final mixes, and I won’t get upset.”
I felt I needed to make that clear. It can sometimes be a burden for a young musician, having some old-timer singing all over their recor
d.
Were you really afraid of becoming a burden to her?
Yeah, I was laughing about it with Ólöf the other day.
Saying that it’s as if she’s a beautiful little bird sitting on a branch, singing its youthful melody, when all of the sudden this big peacock sits on the branch next to her and breaks the tree. Ólöf and I are friends and equals, but as interpreted by some American blog that doesn’t know anything, my singing on her record might become a burden. But it all worked out, though, and she decided to use my vocals in the end. Hopefully I didn’t break her tree.
Then the Antony thing came up a bit differently. When I was making Volta, I rented a studio in Jamaica for a month and invited him for a visit, and to sing with me on ‘Dull Flame Of Desire’. We spent a few days singing together, and during that time he wrote a piano song that I sang over in gibberish Icelandic, you know, that hazy undefined scratch vocal you make when you’re coming up with a melody
but of course I still love her
, because by her I know a lot of good artists!, My favorite albums were post and homogenic
