Wired 1998-06 By Colin Berry "Sno-Koan" A wild-child woman born in the land of northern lights and volcanoes, Björk Gudmundsdóttir has made a career of playing pop paradox -- no surprise for someone whose family has gone from mud house to MTV in two generations. Björk released her first record, an album of Icelandic folk songs, at the age of 11. Since then, her impish looks and outsize voice have belied the growing maturity of her music. A classically trained flautist and pianist, Björk put the primal scream in The Sugarcubes' pop-punk a decade ago. Gone solo in 1992, she has collaborated with such sound sculptors as Graham Massey, Tricky, Goldie, Mark Bell, and Howie B to imbue techno with a mysticism suited to her fire-and-ice sensibility. With 1997's austere Homogenic, Björk creates a personal history of her twisted Icelandic roots: "Thought I could organize freedom," she sings, "how Scandinavian of me!" Wired caught up with the queen of eclectronica as she prepared for her next tour. Wired: How wired are Icelanders? Björk: Very. Iceland has always been mad for information. We wrote the sagas - what, a thousand years ago? - documenting Scandinavian history. We were quick to take to the idea of home computers because they were all about making access to information easier. Some of the best Internet companies in the world are in Iceland, even though we have only 260,000 people. The capital, Reykjavík, where I'm living now, is very modern, but at the same time surrounded by mountains and oceans. We're still connected to nature; my family still hunts for half our food, but using a mobile phone and a laptop to coordinate with other hunters. Why are Scandinavians so quick to embrace new technology? It speaks to something inside us. I've got a theory that people who live in northern climates - Canadians, Siberians, Scandinavians, even the North Japanese - have something in common. We can talk forever. We love documentation. We can analyze and analyze and analyze. We've developed sort of a delicious schizophrenia: chilly on the outside, but deeply passionate in our hearts. You could be describing your own work. Anyone else making your kind of music? Bands coming from Finland and Canada right now represent a new generation of electronic musicians. They've grown up with computers being part of their life, not the scary aliens some grownups make them out to be. They are very precise and possess a strong sense of beauty. Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, þ-ziq, people on the Rephlex label ... their passion is carefully hidden under layers and layers of information. One reviewer claimed you "treat machines like a woman's best friend"; you've said guitars have no soul. Are you a technophile? I take technology personally. Machines are just tools, and in that way a synthesizer or a sequencer is no colder than a guitar or a flute. People tend to treat newly invented things as enemies, as a threat to their security. But it's a question of how you use them: A song will be warm if you put warmth in it. I have to say, though, that they have become good friends of mine. The machines? Yes. We've invented so many noises you can't even count them. We can make rhythms from the sound of an ant running down a twig. I'm not obsessed with technology, not at all. I love working with freedom, but I also love to work with limitations. Something like a violin has only so many notes; it's only made of wood. The person who can create soul with that has won out on restriction. You make the same claim on your song "Alarm Call": "The less room you give me, the more space I've got." Well, a new noise can be as rich and unpredictable as 10 instruments in a symphony orchestra. So in the last 50 years, electronic music has moved forward as new textures are introduced. Contemporary classical composers writing for stringed instruments are becoming more and more minimal, trying to find new feelings rather than new scales or notes. We're dealing with the same musical structures, but we have so many different textures now. Does this collision of electronic and acoustic instruments confuse the music or create a new kind of fusion? Let me put it this way: A harp will be a harp, and a synthesizer will be a synthesizer. Nothing will ever replace them. But there will still always be something gorgeous about the chemistry of a violin or a voice. We're going to reach some sort of balance. Indeed, Homogenic seems on the one hand chilly and restrained, yet at the same time simmering, ready to explode. I have always been into extremes. I live by the ocean, with massive mountains and swirling blizzards. But I also love my telephone and fax machine. A part of me is very conservative. I'm walking the same streets and hanging out with the same friends I had since childhood. But I'm also very curious. I jump off cliffs. In school I hung out with boys with thick glasses who owned insect collections. I've always been a bit of a trainspotter. How do you see today's young musicians using technology? It's just like punk rock was a few years ago, except 15-year-olds who want to start a band today buy a synthesizer and a sequencer instead of a guitar and drums. Orchestras used to need 50 people in order to fill a whole room with sound. Then the rock band could do it. Now, you just need one person. It's cheaper. It's easier. You've got more control. In Post's "The Modern Things," you sing: "All the modern things have always existed, they've just been waiting to come out and multiply and take over." Is this the end or the beginning? People who make new music and express themselves get the most personal freedom for their imagination. I'm obsessed with that - even romantic about it. Music is like electricity: It's always been there, now we're learning more and more how to understand it.