Björk is expected to release her next LP, Utopia, next month and she's given us a bit more insight into the upcoming album in a new interview. The Icelandic singer actually interviewed herself for W Magazine, and the results are as delightfully strange as you'd expect.
Björk kicked off the self-interviewing process by opening up about her relationship with flutes. After studying the instrument for years, she began using it as an unlikely instrument of rebellion.
"I do remember putting my foot down around 10 or 11 years old, though, and refusing to play music by old dead German guys," she said. "I couldn't relate to them and being an Icelandic girl in the late twentieth century, there wasn't much in common."
Björk went on to explain that she even played the flute in a couple of punk bands and praised the instrument for training her lungs for breathing and stamina — skills she continues to implement.
Björk also asked herself about her working relationship with Alejandro Ghersi (a.k.a. Arca), explaining that she felt she owed him a slightly cheerier album-making experience after Vulnicura.
"He had served my mission with such elegance and dignity, I wanted to find another point of view where we could have the ideal utopian musical collaboration without the baggage of my heartbreak," she said.
Later in the interview, she went on to reveal that Utopia will serve as a sort of mantra for positivity in the age of Donald Trump's presidency. Björk said that she achieved her utopian ideals for the music making process, but noted that "the idea of the album was never to fanatically Pollyanna forth some ideal perfection, but rather a speculation of what our fantasies are and what the reality is and where can they help each other."
As for how that can translate into everyday reality, she wrote:
have courage in going for your first choice and standing by it. i feel in this time of trump it is a necessity to have a plan, a manifesto, an alternative. it's a question of life and death for our species. as a musician i feel i can suggest the musical poetic angle which is that after tragedies one has to invent a new world, knit it or embroider, make it up. it's not gonna be given to you because you deserve it, it doesn't work that way. you have to imagine something that doesn't exist and dig a cave into the future and demand space. it's a territorial hope affair. at the time, that digging is utopian but in the future it will become your reality.
She delved into plenty more topics like love, sex and friendship too. Read the complete interview here.
Utopia is expected to arrive in November. So far, we've only heard one track from the album; revisit "The Gate" below.
Björk kicked off the self-interviewing process by opening up about her relationship with flutes. After studying the instrument for years, she began using it as an unlikely instrument of rebellion.
"I do remember putting my foot down around 10 or 11 years old, though, and refusing to play music by old dead German guys," she said. "I couldn't relate to them and being an Icelandic girl in the late twentieth century, there wasn't much in common."
Björk went on to explain that she even played the flute in a couple of punk bands and praised the instrument for training her lungs for breathing and stamina — skills she continues to implement.
Björk also asked herself about her working relationship with Alejandro Ghersi (a.k.a. Arca), explaining that she felt she owed him a slightly cheerier album-making experience after Vulnicura.
"He had served my mission with such elegance and dignity, I wanted to find another point of view where we could have the ideal utopian musical collaboration without the baggage of my heartbreak," she said.
Later in the interview, she went on to reveal that Utopia will serve as a sort of mantra for positivity in the age of Donald Trump's presidency. Björk said that she achieved her utopian ideals for the music making process, but noted that "the idea of the album was never to fanatically Pollyanna forth some ideal perfection, but rather a speculation of what our fantasies are and what the reality is and where can they help each other."
As for how that can translate into everyday reality, she wrote:
have courage in going for your first choice and standing by it. i feel in this time of trump it is a necessity to have a plan, a manifesto, an alternative. it's a question of life and death for our species. as a musician i feel i can suggest the musical poetic angle which is that after tragedies one has to invent a new world, knit it or embroider, make it up. it's not gonna be given to you because you deserve it, it doesn't work that way. you have to imagine something that doesn't exist and dig a cave into the future and demand space. it's a territorial hope affair. at the time, that digging is utopian but in the future it will become your reality.
She delved into plenty more topics like love, sex and friendship too. Read the complete interview here.
Utopia is expected to arrive in November. So far, we've only heard one track from the album; revisit "The Gate" below.
