Biophilia
| Biophilia | |||||||
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| Björk's studio album | |||||||
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Publication |
2011 |
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| Label (s) | One Little Indian Records , Polydor | ||||||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD, digital |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
49:33 |
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Björk, 16Bit, Damian Taylor |
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Biophilia is the eighth studio album in the solo career of the Icelandic singer Björk . It was released on October 10 and 11, 2011, both on CD and vinyl and in a number of download formats, as well as in the form of apps for the Apple iPad .
Björk's aim with this album is to combine natural phenomena with music and to express them, using multimedia content.
The name of the album
The album's name is derived from Edward O. Wilson's biophilic hypothesis, which assumes an instinctive connection between humans and other living systems. Björk initially thought that the term biophilia means "love for nature" but then found out that it means "love for life". But she kept the name.
history
Björk started working on Biophilia after the tour ended for her previous studio album, Volta . With Biophilia she wanted on the one hand to represent the connection of phenomena of nature with and by means of music, on the other hand to combine an "educational" mission with it. Frustrated that her own music lessons were too academic and too fixated on classical and romantic composers, she wanted to bring Biophilia children, but also musical laypeople, closer to basic musical terms with the help of interactive content. So she initially thought of converting an empty house in Reykjavík into a “music museum”, where each room would have represented a musical idea.
In 2009 she got an offer from National Geographic to shoot a 3D nature documentary with her music. The project did not develop accordingly. When the Apple iPad appeared on the market in 2010 , she decided to use the existing concepts and scripts for an app album.
Björk also wanted to make the “physicality” of music and noises visible for live shows and therefore had instruments manufactured or converted especially for Biophilia so that they can be controlled electronically. At the end of June 2011, Biophilia was presented to the public for the first time live at the Manchester International Festival (MIF).
composition
Björk already used tablet- like electronic instruments with innovative user interfaces on the tour for her previous album Volta , namely the Reactable and the Lemur. Björk wanted to use such and similar devices for Biophilia not only as instruments, but also for composing.
Her long-time musical collaborator Damian Taylor therefore familiarized herself with the Max programming language for the Max / MSP software synthesizer , programmed patches for Max / MSP and then linked this program with tablet surfaces and game controllers. The majority of Biophilia songs were created on such pre-tablet devices.
As mentioned, Björk had his own instruments made for live performances, including a “gravitational harp” for the song Solstice , a “singing Tesla coil ” for Thunderbolt and a hybrid of a celesta with bronze plates as you know them from gamelan orchestras instead of the usual steel plates (called "Gameleste") for the song Crystalline . For the song Sacrifice , on the other hand, she resorted to the "Sharpsichord" built by Henry Dagg, a kind of oversized music box.
Björk relates a certain natural phenomenon to a musical structure in each of the biophilia songs. Moon z. B. contains different repetitive musical cycles. In Thunderbolt to find arpeggios , symbolizing the time between occurrence of lightning and hearing the thunder. Solstice has a counterpoint- like structure that relates to planetary movements and the rotation of the earth.
The lyrics also express natural phenomena metaphorically. Dark Matter refers to the "inexplicable" dark matter and therefore has no English or Icelandic text, but Björk's well-known " Gibberish " (gibberish). Virus symbolizes the relationship between virus and cell as a one-sided, parasitic love relationship. Solstice represents the gravitational force that prevails between celestial bodies in relation to the attraction between people. And in Hollow - a song about DNA - Björk compares himself to a pearl, strung on a chain of ancestors, and relates this to the nucleotides strung on the strands of DNA. Björk feels "transparent" or "hollow" in this way, since humans may be nothing more than the genetic information of their ancestors.
On Biophilia, Björk avoids typical pop rhythms in 4/4 time in several songs. Solstice consists of sections in 7/4 and 6/4 bars. Hollow and Moon contain 17/8 measures. Mutual Core has 5/4 sections and Virus is written in 3/4 time.
Concepts
Biophilia for the iPad comprises 10 apps, which in turn are called up by a "mother app" in the form of an animated 3D galaxy. Each app includes the respective song on the one hand, and a game or animation on the other hand that emphasizes the musical aspect of the respective song. With the help of the app, parts of the song can be played or even rearranged.
With the app for the song virus, for example, viruses attack a cell with their DNA strand. The aim of the game is to prevent the viruses from entering the cell, but at the same time the music gets stuck in a loop. But if you want to hear the song in full in this mode, you have to let the virus attack run free.
Or you can just listen to the songs, with the music appearing either as traditional notes or in a more abstract form. Björk uses Stephen Malinowski's Music Animation Machine software that has been ported to the iPad. The individual apps are accompanied by a musicological treatise by the musicologist Nikki Dibben.
Track list
- Moon (Björk, Damian Taylor) 5:45
- Thunderbolt (Björk, Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir) 5:15
- Crystalline (Björk) 5:08
- Cosmogony (Björk, Sjón ) 5:00
- Dark Matter (Björk, Mark Bell) 3:22
- Hollow (Björk) 5:49
- Virus (Björk, Sjón) 5:26
- Sacrifice (Björk) 4:02
- Mutual Core (Björk) 5:06
- Solstice (Björk, Sjón) 4:41
Cooperations
For Biophilia, Björk worked with a number of multimedia artists and instrument makers. Scott Snibbe was responsible for the production of the Biophilia apps. A team of animators and game developers each contributed one or more apps and animations to Biophilia.
Tried and tested collaborators such as Damian Taylor and Leila Arab also helped with the production. Dark Matter composed them together with Mark Bell (from LFO ). The poet and writer Sjón has again contributed some lyrics, such as B. for Solstice . In addition, a number of remixers have had a significant impact on the songs themselves, such as: B. 16bit (for Mutual Core ), Current Value (for Sacrifice ) or Serban Ghenea (for Crystalline ).
Singles and other promotion
Since every song at Biophilia is also available as an app and every app is available individually, the traditional promotion of singles has lost its importance here.
In January 2011 a modified version of Cosmogony appeared on an app from Touch Press and Faber & Faber with images of space from NASA , ESA and JAXA . On June 28, 2011, Crystalline was released as the lead single. A music video was released in May 2011 ( Michel Gondry was the director ). The song was later released as a Crystalline Series , remixed by a number of artists (Serbhan Ghenea, Omar Souleyman , Matthew Herbert ). Also Cosmogony was released as a traditional single. On September 23, 2011, a music video for Moon surprisingly appeared on Youtube .
Björk also had her official website revised especially for Biophilia. It shows an animated 3D world, similar to the one from the Biophilia Mother app. It was designed by M / M Paris and implemented by the Canadian web design company Jam3, which instead of Adobe Flash , which is usually used for animation, relies entirely on the possibilities of HTML5 .
Artwork
The artwork by Biophilia is based on a photosession by M / M Paris and Inez & Vinoodh. During the recordings you can see Björk with a large, orange wig and a brown-gold dress with a "harp belt" by the designer Three-as-Four. Björk is holding an orange crystal. White ornaments are laid over this image (derived from the 3D galaxy of the Biophilia-Mother app).
In other photos Björk, on the other hand, wears a sleeveless red and blue dress, a belt and has a blue geode in his hand.
trip
According to Björk's ideas, the live shows for Biophilia should not consist of the usual tour in many different cities with one appearance each, but rather of "residencies", i.e. longer stays in a city, where several live concerts are then performed over the course of weeks and music workshops for children should take place during the rest of the time. Björk primarily envisions technical museums as the locations for these residencies.
Biophilia made its live debut in Manchester from June 30th to July 19th 2011 at the MIF. A second residency was held in Reykjavík at the Harpa Concert and Events Center from October 12th to November 7th, 2011. New York City and Santiago de Compostela are traded as places for further residencies . A total of eight such stays are planned over a period of three years.
In 2012 Björk also wants to appear at festivals.
criticism
Biophilia was received mostly benevolently and its innovative app concept was highlighted.
"[...] Biophilia may go new or at least unusual ways in its multimedia, artistic packaging claim, purely musically this record is something like a graphic illustration of the last twenty years Björk."
“The reconciliation of nature and technology, Genesis meets big bang theory, the connection between moon cycles and musical structures, none of this should block your ears for the captivating sound beauty that“ Biophilia ”unfolds over long stretches. Because the album has no visual spectacle and is detached from the apps. "
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Sacks & Co , Sacks & Co. Press release
- ↑ Interview with Damian Taylor , on cycling74.com
- ↑ Björk Song for Solar System iPad App , on www.pastemagazine.com
- ↑ Hyperballads and Hyperlinks ( Memento of the original dated November 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on thegridto.com
- ↑ Facebook Björk events
- ^ Björk "Biophilia". Spex.de, October 10, 2011, accessed on December 22, 2018 .
- ↑ Björk album review Biophilia. Tagesspiegel, October 10, 2011, accessed November 18, 2011 .
