http://www.bjork.com/specials/vespertine/pictures/vespbio/index.htm

Bjork.com  2001

By David Toop


"Vespertine by David Toop"


Vespertine and vespers are revelatory words that encompass botany, 
zoology, astronomy, spirit and the rhythms of the universe: a flower 
opening in the evening, an animal that becomes active after sunset, 
evening prayer, Venus the evening star, setting and dusk. Poetic words 
of contradictory multiple allusions: to love, to hunt, to pray, to 
withdraw into contemplation, to open out as night closes in. "I thrive 
best, hermit style, with a beard and a pipe," Björk sings, with a barely 
audible laugh, on Vespertine. This is the album that follows SelmaSongs, 
last year's soundtrack to Dancer In The Dark, and her last solo album, 
Homogenic.

Sitting in her London home, in early spring, she talks about this new 
and quite contradictory mood, a beautiful introspection that nests in 
privacy yet rejoices in openings. "The album's very much about being 
alone in your house," she says, "in a very quiet sort of introverted 
mood and you whisper, you sort of improvise. Which is between me and 
myself."

There are songs on Vespertine that seem intensely private, like words of 
love, sensuality and confession shared in a space where the world is 
shut out for a moment. Isn't it a contradiction, this public exposure of 
sheltered places and times? "But I think that's life, anyway," she 
responds. "Your grandmother calls 'cause she's sick but you just put on 
a lipstick because you're gonna go out and meet your boyfriend. You meet 
a dog that's thrown up on the way and you have to juggle all those 
things and make them work. Even when you go to bed, if you did a good 
day you did a good juggle and then you have days that are crap because 
you just couldn't.

I quite like music to have to deal with those things. Music like that is 
more real, rather than just isolate it from life. I think there's a 
grain of cowardice there. But then again, just to contradict everything 
I've said, I was conscious for the first time in my life when I did this 
album to create a paradise. A cocoon. I've always been this punk who 
wants everything very real and very stark. This album is partly about 
creating a cocoon, almost like a paradise that you can escape to. Even 
though you know it's not true. You couldn't take this cocoon anywhere. 
It would burst in certain places. But you still believe in the right for 
it to exist, just because of the need for it for humans. That alone 
justifies it."

Björk's engagingly complicated approach to music and life has reached a 
new point of maturity and independence with Vespertine. For Homogenic, 
released in 1997, she began to show signs of moving away from the 
collaborative approach of 1993's Debut and 1995's Post. "I love 
collaborations", she said in may 2000, just before the Cannes debut of 
Danish director Lars von Trier's Dancer In The Dark, the controversial 
film in which Björk also starred. "My favourite is becoming the other 
half of someone. One day Tricky, the next day Evelyn Glennie. I'm still 
truthful to what I am but it's the communication. You write a lot of 
tunes on your own. There's a lot of solitude so when you collaborate you 
might as well go all the way."

But in the process of creating songs for the film, she had discovered a 
greater desire for self-determination, along with new possibilities to 
take her laptop to a mountain hut in Iceland and sculpt orchestras or 
dissect and rebuild her voice. "The next project, everything is to do 
with craftsmanship" she said at that time. "I'm gonna be having the 
discipline to sit down and do it myself." So Vespertine still features 
the work of some familiar collaborators such as Guy Sigsworth, Mark 
Bell, programmers Valgeir Sigurdsson and Marius de Vries, Dancer In the 
Dark arranger Vince Mendoza and mixer Mark 'Spike' Stent, as well as the 
newer names of Matmos, Matthew Herbert, Bogdan Raczynski, Thomas Knak 
and harpist Zeena Parkins, but this is very definitely an album directed 
by Björk.

The way she describes it, the relationship is closer to the way things 
were in the 1970s, with the producer curating the creative input of a 
crew of supremely talented session players. "They would hear a lot of 
improvisations," she says, "and they would collect noises." As ever, she 
has a sensitive ear for who or what is the hottest noise: the 
ferociously detailed micro-rhythms of the San Francisco duo Matmos, or 
Thomas Knak of Opiate and Future 3. Despite a passing Oval sample or 
rhythm tracks constructed by teams that define state of the art beats, 
this is a collection of overpoweringly emotional songs, gorgeous 
melodies and exquisitely inventive arrangements. Immediately 
recognisable as the creation of Björk, Vespertine is a distinct 
progression in her own work, emphatic evidence that she is totally 
beyond comparison with anybody else in her field.

"Born stubborn, me, will always be," she sings. Björk Gudmundsdóttir was 
born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1965, where she grew up in a communal 
household (though not a hippie commune, she's keen to point out). Music 
was played 24 hours a day. "I remember a queue by the record player," 
she says. "The record would finish and you'd be ready to put another one 
on." At the age of five she was enrolled in music school where she 
studied flute and piano for ten years. Then at the age of eleven she 
made an album with the help of her mother and friends. A big hit in 
Iceland, the eponymously titled Björk featured only one song written by 
Björk herself, though she became an Icelandic celebrity on the strength 
of its success. "I felt a lot of guilt," she admits. "I promised myself 
that I would never front anything unless I was the one who did it."

So at the age of 13 she started forming punk bands. First came Exodus, 
then Tappi Tíkarrass, then K.U.K.L., a band that recorded two albums for 
the label run by the legendary UK anarchist band, Crass. "When I was a 
punk there was no such thing as Icelandic music," she says. "We had to 
invent it. Nobody even sung in Icelandic. Maybe now, the genius bands 
like Múm and Sigur Ros come up. I think it's a second generation thing. 
It's not such a big deal." That first period of invention included many 
influences from her peers, ranging from the compendious musical 
knowledge of Asmunder Jónsson, a radio DJ and musicologist who now runs 
the Bad Taste organisation in Iceland, and Sjón, poet, wit, dandy & 
experimentalist, whose discussions of surrealism with Einar Örn and 
Björk led to many antagonistic, drunken and inspiring arguments on the 
nature of art. "Being the only girl," says Björk, "it was my role to be 
a little punk. I was in a punk band with this long orange hair and no 
eyebrows. I'd confront the intellectuals, which is pretty brave because 
I didn't even have the vocabulary. It wasn't like we were fighting but 
it was basically instinct versus logic."

In 1987, Einar Örn, Siggi Baldursson and Björk formed a new band, called 
The Sugarcubes, with Thór Eldon, Fridrik Erlingsson, Einar Melax and 
Bragi Olafsson. From their first single, "Birthday", they were a band 
with unique qualities, combining a raw post-punk feel with touches of 
experimental sonority, affecting melodies and Björk's extraordinary, 
exultant singing. The Sugarcubes put Icelandic music on the world map, 
with Björk's personality, dress sense and vocal style tailor made for an 
increasingly faceless music scene in desperate need of strong, 
innovative and self-determined individuals.

By 1992, after 4 albums, The Sugarcubes were ready to split. Their last 
release - a remix project - reflected Björk's growing involvement in the 
UK dance scene. Beginning a lengthy professional relationship with 
Graham Massey, she had recorded with 808 State, singing on two tracks on 
EX:EL, but also pursued her love of jazz by recording the Gling-Gló 
album with pianist Gudmundar Ingólfsson's trio. Then Debut, released in 
July 1993, changed everything. Produced by Nellee Hooper, emerging as a 
leading producer after an apprenticeship in Bristol's vibrantly eclectic 
hip-hop scene and massive success with Soul II Soul, and featuring the 
string arranging and tablas of Talvin Singh and brass arrangements by 
Björk and Oliver Lake, the album introduced Björk as one of the most 
unusual solo artists and distinctive vocalists to appear in years.

Since Debut, her work has always followed her heart. Early days in 
Reykjavik listening to her grandparents' jazz collection, her mother's 
rock records, her classical music education, the songs, sagas and poetry 
of Iceland, anarchist punk bands and the arguments about surrealism were 
all carried with her into the musical vibrancy of London's stylistic, 
ethnic and artistic mix. Debut sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide 
and was followed in 1993 by Post, an even bigger success that added 
Graham Massey, Howie B and Tricky to Nellee Hooper's production skills. 
After Post's bigger beats, deeper sub-bass and the cartoonish big band 
outburst of "It's Oh So Quiet", Homogenic, released in 1997, was more 
experimental in its contrasting textures, more bold in its intensity and 
structure.

In conversation, Björk speaks often about courage and cowardice, both of 
which figure large in the moral framework of her creative decisions. 
Characteristically, she has always pulled back from situations where 
celebrity or habit threatened to reduce her freedom, or she has expanded 
into areas of high risk where the potential for learning outweighed the 
possibility of losing credibility or commercial leverage. Her decision 
to act in Dancer In The Dark, for example, exposed her to vitriolic 
criticism from some film critics yet earned respect among those who 
recognised her need to move forward and take on new challenges. Her 
choice of collaborators over the years - fashion designers Alexander 
McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, photographers Nick Knight, Stephane 
Sednaoui and Nobuyoshi Araki, video director Chris Cunningham, 
percussionist Evelyn Glennie, remixers Dillinja, Funkstörung and Mika 
Vainio - is a reflection of this desire to work with artists at the 
cutting edge.

Vespertine is an adult album, full of childlike joy, sparkling with the 
fragile sounds of harp, celeste, clavichord and music box. "Sun In My 
Mouth" has a poem for its lyrics, one of a series of songs written in 
1925 by American poet e. e. cummings. It comes as no surprise to find 
his words in a Björk album. His capacity to merge sensuality, passion, 
playfulness and universal wonder with fierce precision, uncompromising 
accessibility and unwavering experimentalism mirror Björk's aspirations 
and achievements.

Vespertine crunches through the sound of snow, crackles with the sound 
of digital chatter, flutters with strange little voices that dart at the 
edge of perception, whispers in the fading light. At its heart is a big 
human heart. "I think pop music," says Björk, "folk music, just the 
music that humans make for humans to get through a day, everyday music 
as opposed to more serious music - for it to be all these things that we 
never see every day, like ukuleles, and make something magical is easy. 
But to use the noises that everybody is using every day - the remote 
control, the mobile, the Internet and fax machine - it's not about 
wanting to be weird or something or avant-garde or any of that shit. 
It's down to earth. It's dealing with the porridge and cup of tea. 
Digital stuff is all around us anyway. Making a song out of that. I 
think it's braver and more taking on the moment than other things. That 
was my little speech."