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Björk
Björk Gudmundsdottir has become as synonymous of Iceland as its capital Reykjavik and the island’s exploding geysers. Popularly known as Björk, the charismatic singer is a compulsive creator and magnetic performer. Her towering rendition of "Oceania" at the opening ceremony of 2004 Athens Olympic Games in August vindicated the organisers' gamble on an artist who, throughout her 28 year career, has constantly tested the limits of her vocal and artistic talents. In 2007 she brought out an album called Volta.
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Björk
That career began precociously in 1976 when the eleven-year-old brought out a first eponymous album, comprised of several standard pop songs. It had singer Björk also playing flute and piano alongside her stepfather on guitar. Her mother designed the record sleeve.
Soon after, Björk joined punk rock band Spit & Snot, a move that was at tangents with the classical music upbringing Björk had received until then (grounded in a solid knowledge of styles that ranged from Stockhausen to J.S. Bach). The shortlived alternative group was replaced in the late Seventies when she was involved in the post-punk bands Exodus and Tappi Tikarass, both heavily influenced by Siouxie and the Banshees. Tappi Tikarass released the EP "Bitid Fast I Vitid" and "Miranda" before Björk moved on to form the goth-influenced band Kukl. The group brought out two albums on Crass Records before transforming themselves into the nigh-mythical group Sugarcubes in the summer of 1986.
The intensely colourful Sugarcubes broke into international music circles with their 1988 debut album "Life's Too Good". The sextet released two more albums before tensions between Björk and Einar Orn Benediktsson lead to the group splitting up. Björk left for London to embark on one of the Nineties most successful solo careers.
It was her collaboration with producer Nellee Hooper (Massive Attack and Soul II Soul) that led to Björk's initial breakthrough. Her first solo album in 1993, "Debut", blended her haunting vocals with gripping dance grooves, and brought her the album of the year award from British NME music magazine. It went platinum in the UK and gold in the US.
Björk's follow-up 1995 record "Post" equalled those sales and underlined the composer's constant desire to explore and enrich her repertoire. Her 1996 release "Telegram" was made up of radical remixes of "Post" that included electronic collaborations with Tricky, Deodato and Graham Massey. Capping an intensive creative period, Björk brought out "Homogenic" in 1997. It was the Icelandic icon's most experimental studio work and inspired several remixes in the years that followed.
But it also coincided with Björk's desire to explore other art forms. Danish film director Lars von Trier persuaded the singer to invest not only her musical but also her acting skills in his groundbreaking film "Dancer in the Dark". Despite, - or, perhaps, thanks to -, her tempestuous relationship with the filmmaker, Björk produced an astounding performance that bagged her the Best Actress award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Her film score once again brought her together with Mark Bell who had collaborated on the "Homogenic" CD.
In the two years that followed that success, Björk released a "Greatest Hits" collection and a "Family Tree" box set. But, for much of the time, she retreated to her New York and Reykjavik homes to prepare her 2004 release "Medulla: the inner part of an animal or plant structure". This 15-song album is very much a return to Björk's roots and the fertile vocal tradition of North Europe's hinterlands. The 39-year-old has said this is her most intuitive and spontaneous studio album to date, heavily influenced by her pregnancy and the subsequent birth of her second child. Its brilliant construction around Björk's iconoclastic voice is bereft of the loaded instrumentation of the previous releases. It includes "Oceania", the haunting song by Iceland poet Sjon who is obsessed by Greek mythology.
How appropriate that it was written for the Summer Games where Björk executed the high point of the opening ceremony, perched above a manmade lake in the Olympic stadium in front of 70,000 spectators and hundreds of millions of television spectators. "We are creatures born in the ocean...and we still are made of that ocean," Björk told Véronique Mortaigne of the French daily Le Monde. "Just look at how our sweat is salty".
"Medulla" has the icy and challenging trademarks that characterise Björk's fertile career. Impulsive, exotic, erotic yet childlike, she continues to perform impossible vocal gymnastics that are enhanced by the use of the Surround 5.1 system one can only read on the Super Audio CD (SACD). The composer has further textured her seventh album by inviting the Inuit singer Tayia Tagaq, and both the Iceland and the London choirs to participate. As to the future, few can predict what Björk will next produce in a singular career on which she makes the following observation: "I do not judge anything, I do not preach anything, I am only testing my own limits".
September 2004.
Daniel Brown
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