http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~marty01/mag/mag7.html 7 1999-05-26 By Rob Wood "Love All" The last few years haven't been particularly joyful ones for Björk: the target of a letter bomber; constantly in the sights of the tabloids; that infamous airport fracas. But as her fab new single, 'All Is Full Of Love', gets ready to roll, she's happier than she has been in ages, living back in Iceland and starring Lars Von Trier's new film. Rob Wood gets loved up with Bjork. Björk is happy. She loves being a robot. She loves living in Iceland. And she loves dancing in the dark. All is full of love and she thinks she has just made some of the best music she has ever done. This is not the same Björk who made the mesmerisingly elegant, but difficult and painful 'Homogenic'. That aggressive and conflicting album came from the head of someone far from cheerful. Just as she was about to go into the studio to record her third solo LP a deranged American fan sent her a letter bomb before blowing his brains out on video. That was 1996. 1997 didn't prove any easier. It was to be the year the tabloids invaded her personal life: an invasion she was not prepared for and did not welcome. It notoriously came to a head when the tiny and gentle Icelandic star fought a camera crew who had confronted the privacy of her son Sindri at Bangkok Airport. Björk was not a happy bunny, but characteristically she used the sadness she felt to re-evaluate her life and to regenerate, a regeneration that started with her leaving her new-found home of London and returning to where she feels she is meant to be, a regeneration that now appears to be complete. She has moved on and you can hear it in her Voice. "I'm a little bit tired, but I am very happy," she squeaks in her strange fusion of cockney and Icelandic. The reason she is tired is that it is 9pm in Copenhagen and she has spent the whole day rehearsing for her first ever film appearance. Initially asked to score the soundtrack to Breaking The Waves director Lars Von Trier's new picture Dancer In The Dark, she is now to star in the film too. It is a bizarre tale of a downtrodden Czech girl who is obsessed with US musicals and gets through life by making up songs in her head. A concept not particularly unfamiliar to Bjork. "Ever since I was a child, I've had this naive belief that in daily life in any situation that is awkward, like when you have to keep up small talk with people you don't know, it's much more natural to break into a tune in your mind by closing your eyes and tilting your head." Björk has always done this, and perhaps this goes some way to explaining her uncanny talent at writing wonderful songs. She knows she will always be a singer and musician. Although she adores working with Von Trier and she is very proud of her soundtrack - a collaboration between herself and 'Homogenic' cohort LFO's Mark Bell - she does not see herself as an actress. Von Trier has a reputation for working with amateurs, so Björk doesn't really call what she does acting and claims she won't pursue this new avenue once the film opens in 2000. "I always feel like I haven't got very much time, maybe I've got 50 years. I'm not going to waste it trying to be a racing car driver or a politician or an actress or..." After a long hum, she decides: "a stamp collector. I'll stick to music. I look at the film as a way to support my music. The video to her new single 'All Is Full Of Love' also involved her working with another hot directorial talent. The man who gave the Aphex Twin breasts, Chris Cunningham, has morphed Björk into a robot. An exquisite robot with her own slanted eyes and small, naughty lips. Two robots to be precise. One Björk android builds another because it needs to love and the two embrace each other, making for some shockingly beautiful techno soul and 'All Is Full Of Love' is the perfect description for her current state of mind, helped, in no small part, by her recent relocation back to Iceland. "When I left Iceland I was going to go to London for a short visit and I ended up liking it so much that I stayed for four years, which is quite a long while. But I now know I function in Iceland perfectly. It's got nature mountains and winds, and I can at any moment have a walk and sing at the top of my voice without anybody finding me weird," she explains. "But it's still a really modern place. It's a nice combination of nature and techno. I do miss London a bit sometimes though. It's got excellent record shops and good DJing and I made really really good friends there, but I do keep in touch." I wonder does the fame that intruded on her life in London rear its head in the same way now that she is back living over a blacksmith's shop overlooking Reykjavík harbour? "Fame has never been a problem in Iceland. Iceland people are brilliant. They are sailors. They are like, 'So what?' They don't find it interesting at all. They try to talk down to me all the time, just to keep me in my place." The tourist gift shops of Iceland might belie this, with their proudly displayed 'Debut' CDs stacked up next to toy Vikings, but you can tell from her giggles that Björk is more than content with where she now lives. Despite being engulfed in darkness for a large part of the year, for those who have been there it is easy to understand how one could fall for the magic of the snow-covered volcanos and timber-framed fishermen's houses. Björk has owned her flat amongst the bars, streets and boats of Reykjavík for nine years and she can see familiar faces from her window. "When I'm washing my dishes in the kitchen," she offers in a voice that has now turned to thick cockney with the odd word missing, because she hasn't spoken English for ages, "I look out of my window and I can see Gus Gus faffing about in the studio. When I go to bed I can hear the beats they are making through my wall. I find it comforting. It makes me sleep better." Beats have always found a place in Björk's music ever since she left indie-punksters The Sugarcubes, but she says she now finds it hard to know what dance music is. "I never know where to draw the line. What is dance music and what isn't? I'm still listening to mostly electronic music, which is instrumental, and then I listen to quite a lot of, I guess what you call classical music. I don't know what you'd call it, guess it's eccentric, ehm, electric music. Yeah. I listen to eccentric electric music in my house all the time. People like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, a lot of bands on labels like Rephlex. It's definitely not four to the floor." Although they are all very different records, each of her three solo LPs. 'Debut', 'Post' and 'Homogenic' have stamped dance music onto her soaring voice, whether it be Nelee Hooper or Mark Bell at the controls. When asked about each one, Björk, for the first time, loses her positive, up-beat demeanour. "I can't really listen to them because I think they are all crap now," she states, before pausing to reconsider. "I think each one of them was a child of their times for me. I did the best I could each time, I really care for them. It's like a photo album for me. That's my life. Each album was my life at the time." Her voice gets quieter with each word and it becomes obvious she is upset - all the memories welling up: "You're making me all mushy now. They are more like memories than albums. It's very emotional for me. Lots of memories." So we can, of course, again expect a different set of memories, a different attitude encapsulated in the new songs she is writing for the next LP. "I write songs all the time to keep sane, I'm not finishing an album at the moment, but I've already got eight or nine pieces down. It's going to be the opposite of 'Homogenic'," she firmly states while laughing. "It is hard to explain because I'm in the middle of it. 'Homogenic' was very confrontational. Everything was on eleven, both emotionally and the strings and the beats. Like everyone had a flag and a trumpet and a dude-dude-loo!" She squeaks like a trumpet fanfare. "If 'Homogenic' was at eleven, my new stuff is at minus eleven. It's very happy and I guess 'Homogenic' was angry. This is happy and very quiet and very introvert and very micro." Whether she is piecing together a film in Denmark, listening to eccentric electric music above a blacksmith's or singing on her own beneath the Northern Lights, it is good to know that all is full of love and Björk Gudmundsdóttir is smiling, full to the brim. 'All Is Full Of Love' is out on June 7th on One Little Indian