Face 2001-08 By Piers Martin Photography by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin "I'm Like A Bird" The wonderful return of Björk: 'My new album's my secret affair with myself,' she explains Party round at Björk's place? Sure, why not? Bring a bottle if you like - there won't be too many people, maybe 20 at the most; let's keep it casual. But if you've got one, please, take your laptop. Then you can really get involved. Suck up whatever you fancy from Napster, perhaps debut a few of your own compositions. You could improvise with Matmos, the camp San Franciscan pair whose reprocessed clicks and micro-melodies gently embellish Björk's new album, Vespertine. Or you could listen and smile as Björk sings and dances around her apartment high up in SoHo, New York, amongst friends. It's her party, after all. And her home, more than anywhere else during these past three years, is where her heart is. This kind of harmonious musical situation - the domestic gig, the spontaneous in-house mini-rave - is, Björk says, her favourite. These improvised soirees have happened regularly at her homes in Iceland, Spain, Denmark, London and New York (she's travelled plenty since leaving London in 1996, when her hardcore celebrity factor finally made life in the UK unbearable). It's behind her own closed doors, or at her mates' places, that she's most content. And this is why Vespertine, her first release since last autumn's Selmasongs, her score to Lars von Trier's controversial Dancer In The Dark (in which she played the leading role of blind, doomed factory worker Selma) and her first proper solo studio album since 1997's Homogenic, is an intimate, complex and luxurious celebration of a particular state of domestic bliss. One with which that other celebrity goddess, Nigella Lawson, could certainly empathise. The original title for Vespertine was Domestic. It is, its author says over afternoon coffee in a predominantly beige north-west London tea room, 'about being in your 'ouse and having a good time on your own. Sort of same sort of mood when you're daydreaming and reading your favourite book, that sort of mood. About wanting to be on your own in your house and unplug the phone and if you want, get someone over, your best mate, and cook and meal together. 'So I guess, without it being that focused, but sort of looking at it afterwards, it's my attempt to make pop music that is introverted.' Vespertine is an evocative, poetic word with multiple meanings, but which chiefly relates to activities that occur nocturnally in nature. Worked on concurrently with both Dancer In The Dark and the necessarily harsh, clacking Selmasongs, Björk's fourth album proper is the culmination of a restless three years. She describes it as 'more my little secret affair I was having with myself. It was like a hobby, or something on the side', occasioning you to wonder if perhaps her other solo albums - 1993's Debut, 1995's Post and then Homogenic - weren't viewed as lightly. 'Well, hmmm, that's a good question,' she answers, in her curious placeless accent that is impossible to mimic. Ultimately, what you do is a total laugh through, isn't it? Compared to working in a factory, at least. 'Yeah, I guess so, I guess compared to film I did, which definitely wasn't a laugh, doing this album was definitely a laugh. I guess maybe that comparison, because a lot of my energy and time went into the film, erm...' She pauses, thinks, perhaps of the film whose name she can't seem to bring herself to utter, and quietly smacks her lips. 'But it was very easy to separate it. It felt very, very different when I was doing my own stuff, that was different altogether.' A record initially designed on and for the laptop (an Apple Mac G3 PowerBook, the musician's choice; although she's recently upgraded to the sexier G4) Vespertine was later fleshed out in a residential studio in Andalucia, southern Spain, with an Icelandic string quartet arranged by long-term Björk collaborator the Brazilian Eumir Deodato, and a 60- piece choir and 60-piece orchestra. Despite this mass involvement, it is her most intricate, romantic and sensual album yet. Measured, intelligent and seductive, within her unique oeuvre it bears most resemblance, sonically, to Debut. And still, after all this time, though many have tried, no one sounds quite like Björk. IS SHE relevant today? When has she ever ceased to be relevant, more like Genuine artistic talents with her level of international repute are so thin on the ground these days that, yes, we can safely say that if she suddenly disappeared we'd sure as hell miss her. Like Richard D James and Spike Jonze and Alexander McQueen - her peers, if you like - the best thing about Björk is that you can guarantee she'll always be interesting and will always strive to produce work that fascinates and thrills. She will never settle for second best. She's ace. Though Björk has lived in New York for a year now with her teenage son Sindri (has she secured a green card? 'Hmm. Not sure. I'm very spoilt like that.'), Vespertine's post-production took place in London in early 2001. It was tweaked into shape by Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt of critics' darlings Matmos - they'd remixed a track from Homogenic and share a similar, ultra-disciplined, Dogme-like approach to sound- sourcing from one's immediate environment - and features a fleeting contribution from her pal, house producer Matthew Herbert. The result is a deliciously textured, coolly cutting-edge and surprisingly even-paced collection of 12 songs that, were Björk's voice removed, would not sound out of place on Warp Records' roster. Indeed, one track that didn't make it onto Vespertine, 'Who Is It?', was recorded with the young, widely acclaimed, Canada-based Pole Bogdan Raczynski, whose three astonishing albums for Aphex Twin's Rephlex label reveal a massive and exciting future talent (think hyperactive drum and bass spaz-outs mixed with bucolic cyber-love songs. His new material is very special). 'He's incredible', Björk says fondly. 'And the way we did it, because he's such a strong character, it became a duet between me and him. But this track would have stood out too much on the album.' Too good for a B-side, she might release it on the internet. She met Raczynski at a couple of Warp raves late last year. Went along with her best friend Leila Arab, the musician, got boozed-up and well rowdy. A self-confessed introvert, 'an Icelandic outsider', she finds the collective introspection of those events, where hundreds of people gather to hear music they'd normally listen to in bedroom isolation, 'perverse'. Without such collaborations, it would be fair to say, Björk would not be where she is today. It's the reason she's in London in June, editing Radiohead-esque 'blipverts' for Vespertine's TV campaign at Carlton Television's plush St John's Wood studios, where we first meet. Extracted from the video for 'Hidden Place', the first of five singles from the album, the designated images are of Björk's framed head with what looks like paint pouring out of her eyes and nose, splattering in patterns across her cheeks, then back up into her eyes. It's a striking sequence. It provides rich contrast to the video for the third single, 'Pagan Poetry', due out in January and recently filmed by esteemed photographer Nick Knight In this the singer is heavily pierced, with chains dangling from nipples - though, not having seen it, we're assured it's all done in the best possible taste. And the second single? The beautiful 'It's Not Up To You'. But she's still deciding on a director for that. Lest we forget, Chris Cunningham made the sex'n'robots flick for her last single, 'All Is Full Of Love'. Interestingly, she, plans to shoot all five videos upfront, regardless of how, say, the first two singles fare. Commercial success is not a priority for Björk. You suspect it never has been (her being an old Icelandic punk and all that). Having sold, according to her label One Little Indian 'approximately ten million records world-wide' at the age of 35, she can afford to indulge her furiously creative desires as she wishes. And other people's too: she recently sang a work the classical composer John Taverner wrote specially for her. 'I'm very honoured that somebody actually would just take my vocal range and think of it as an instrument and write out a piece for my voice', she says, sipping at her coffee. 'I felt very very spoilt.' Then there are also further collaborations planned with the Brodsky Quartet (they recorded a version of 'Hyperballad' for Björk's remix album Telegram and backed her at her concert at London's Union Chapel in 1999). Meanwhile, last month, she felt London to spend four weeks holidaying in Greenland, but secretly she's working on tracks for her next album out there and rehearsing an Inuit choir. In August, Björk will tour Vespertine, complete with Matmos, laptops and, possibly, her Greenlander choir, in some of the world's most prestigious venues, including La Scala opera house in Rome and the English National Opera's London home, The Coliseum - venues in which conventional pop acts have not previously performed. It's purely a matter of acoustics: she wants to be able to sing without microphones, in specifically built halls where the glitch beats and delicate rhythms of Vespertine won't be compromised. Björk still owns a property in west London, near to the Edgware Road. She's a frequent visitor to the city and today, as we walk the hundred yards from Carlton Television to the cafe where the interview takes place, people either stop and share or surreptitiously glance at her. Towards the end of our conversation, three American girls walk into the cafe and up to Björk to tell her how, great she is and would she mind if she had her photo taken with them. Björk politely declines. She can't help but stand out. Her long black hair, softly parted, and milky skin is offset by a satin pink and black-striped housecoat, made by young Parisian designers Alexandra and Matthieu. She wears a plain white T-shirt underneath, straight black trousers and black shoes, and carries a small bulbous wooden handbag. Inside is her mobile phone, the number of which only a few of her friends have. She gets nervous during interviews and requires a couple of coffees with her fruit salad to spark her up. 'I'm not saying this very well, sorry,' she will apologize. 'Probably because I make music - it's not my job to kind of analyse these things.' But still she chatters intently and articulates her opinions in that most singular, unorthodox and intelligent manner, where the point of the speech is reached in an agreeably roundabout fashion. When she moved to London from Iceland in January 1993, Björk thought she'd be here for one album and then return home. She ended up staying for almost four years. 'When I left London it was very different,' she says, beginning the next sentence with her favourite two words. 'I guess my intention originally was to devote my time to write music and I guess how things developed, how sort of the whole celebrity thing had taken over the songwriting thing, so I reckon I should go somewhere and write songs. So that's what I've been doing ever since really.' In Iceland, in the time of The Sugarcubes, everyone recommended they move overseas to consolidate their achievements. Instead they told everyone to fuck off. 'So when I moved to England,' she continues, 'I wanted to communicate for sure. That's one of the reasons I came. I think it was a very gorgeous period. But actually I'm quite an introvert person by nature, so I think I pushed myself to a line that I would like to try once in a lifetime for sure. More on the experience of communicating with strangers, was sort of the experiment.' On what level? 'I guess every level, because I was writing songs for people, was doing interviews, was meeting people, just basically I literally felt like I was being in Trafalgar Square, just waiting. But you know, I really enjoyed it because it's so not my character. 'I guess Homogenic, my last album, was kind of when I become an extrovert and where I communicated so much with so many strangers and done so many concerts and so many interviews, which I did out of choice, but I'd sort of peaked. I started to get defensive, just about communication, with anybody, whether it's my lover, or just anybody, and that's quite an interesting stage to be too, right? And then I guess this album is again me being what I was all the time anyway, kind of more introvert. More like the person you'll see at a Warp gig,' she smiles. The nature of Björk's fame varies from country to country. In the UK, suffice to say, she's most well-known. Which is why she prefers the relative anonymity of New York, where she isn't preyed upon by paparazzi. 'Like, you can see Robert De Niro walk down the main street and nobody cares, you know. But here it's like tabloid. Yeah, I mean, I was shocked. I turned on the radio in the taxi when I came from the airport and it was on national news that somebody, celebrity, was pregnant. And it was next to, there's a war going on somewhere. Like, you'd only see that in England, nowhere else. That sort of celebrity tabloid obsession. 'England is different from other countries, for sure,' she chirrups. 'Not better or worse, just different. I think it's also English people's talent in compressing things into culture, that things become a slogan. The minute you said it it's a slogan. Like people just kind of casually use a synthesiser or blah blah blah do something and suddenly "IT'S ELECTRONIC!'" So your new slogan for Vespertine could be: staying in is the new going out. 'Hehehehe! That's very English of you! Hahahaha!' That's dead old though! 'Heheheheh! It seems there's more exciting things happen at home. The best place to be is in your house. You've got the best computer games, got the internet, can download the best stuff, got the best sound.' Are you happiest there? 'Yeah. But I guess in my case, home isn't necessarily one place.' How many homes do you have? 'Erm, well, I rented a place in Denmark when I was doing the film, and when I worked in Spain, that's not my home obviously, but I stayed there for six months. And now I live in New York. So there's a lot of different homes there.' Björk has 'never really watched it to be honest', she says of The Dancer in the Dark, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the last year's Cannes Film Festival. Because she spent so much time making and mixing the music for that film - and since, as both she and Lars von Trier have luridly testified, the filming was genuinely traumatic experience - she tends to focus her attention on how her SelmaSongs sound through certain cinema's soundsystems. 'I was kind of thinking more about that really.' Has she had offers of film roles since? 'Yeah. I don't mean to brag but yeah, I have.' From huge Hollywood directors? 'Some. I'm really flattered and honoured, but I should just stick to making tunes'. She has a voracious appetite for new music and appears genuinely thrilled when, at the end of the interview, I play her upcoming songs from Bogdan Razcynski and Roots Manuva. She adores Destiny's Child, says they have that same 'pop glow' that Michael Jackson used to have in the early Eighties, while the last gig she went to was an A.R.E. Weapons show in New York. She arrived to late from the photo shoot for Squarepusher's amazing set at London's 100 Club at the beginning of June. She only got to see the dry ice wafting up onto Oxford street. 'He's the best,' she nods. Then she says something that, really, sums up everything you could ever possibly want to know about Björk. 'Music', she says, 'is as important as sleep. Everybody thinks it's just a luxury, an item or something. But I actually think it's necessity. You know, we need it.' And with her as its most excellent ambassador, music needs Björk too.