Björk
Markie Robson-Scott
With its wild, windswept seascape and cliff-top settlement, the first scene of The Northman, Robert Eggers’s first big-budget movie (around $90 million in the making), harks back, a little, to The Lighthouse (2019), a one-of-a-kind black and white marvel with only two protagonists. (Cinematographer Jarin Blatschke has worked on all Eggers’s films, including his first, The Witch, as has costume designer Linda Muir).But similarities end there, and if you wince occasionally at the violence in The Lighthouse, which includes being buried alive, attacks by a deranged supernatural seagull and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Grimes, the Canadian art pop performer, made headlines last week when she predicted the end of musical performance as we know it on a podcast interview with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. Live music, she said, would be “obsolete soon”, while she gave a window of a couple of decades in which artificial intelligence would become “so much better at making art” than human creatives.I suspect that Björk, who has been incorporating cutting edge technology into her music since before Grimes was born, would have a few opinions on live music’s purported obsolescence. Her Cornucopia tour, which Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Visits from major foreign ballet companies are always news, but a two-week London season by one of America’s “big three” is something to get excited about. San Francisco Ballet doesn’t rest on its laurels. Eight of the 12 pieces offered in the coming Sadler's Wells season were premiered by the company only last year. Helgi Tomasson, its long-serving artistic director, tells theartsdesk what it means to keep pushing the boundaries.JENNY GILBERT: You’ve been at the helm of this company for an astonishing 34 years. That gives you a long view of the art form that’s almost unique.HELGI TOMASSON: Read more ...
Chris Harvey
For the past decade, Victoria Park in east London has been host to the Field Day and Lovebox festivals, both homegrown and both still growing in size and influence. Last year’s headliners included rare appearances from Aphex Twin (Field Day) and Frank Ocean (Lovebox), bringing huge crowds to this vast and beautiful Victorian lung. This year, however, both were outbid and unceremoniously booted out to search for pastures new when the American organisers of Coachella decided to set up a new London festival.All Points East, a 10-day event, spread over two successive long weekends, boasts Read more ...
joe.muggs
I'll be straight: I wasn't sure what to expect at this show, because I've never been a Björk fanatic as such. I loved – and saw live – The Sugarcubes as a teenager, I've raved to her Nineties Debut and Post era tracks, and I've enjoyed plenty more since, not least the intimacies of Vespertine [2001] and the wild expansiveness of Volta [2007]. I've been impressed with her choices of collaborator, and always considered her a vital cultural mover and shaker. But there's never been that thrill at hearing of a new release or need to learn all the words to a song. Sometimes I've found the Read more ...
Tina Edwards
Australia and Japan were first to host Björk Digital, but it lands at London’s Somerset House with fresh, never-before-seen work. The immersive virtual reality exhibition collates several digital- and film-based works born from Björk's critically acclaimed album Vulnicura. Arguably her most revealing release to date, Vulnicura – in all its forms – documents the destruction of her marriage, with devastatingly unguarded lyrics.Visitors are greeted by a 360-degree film commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, Black Lake. Accompanying the track of the same name, the dual-screen panoramic video Read more ...
Matthew Wright
For an album exploring the theme of heartbreak in wintry, coiling musical phrases, peppered with stark, fractured lyrics, the reception of Björk’s original Vulnicura was ever so slightly lukewarm. Her spacious and probing compositions were admired rather than adored, her analysis of breakup seeming to have a steely, cerebral edge. So it was a brave decision to adapt these songs for strings, an alteration that’s unlikely to make them any more accessible.Losing the rhythmic texture offered by the percussion, which is only partially replaced by a chopping string pulse on pieces like “Notget Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In October a special tribute will be paid to the late great DJ Frankie Knuckles, the man who defined house music in the 1980s. A former bank In Chicago, now known as the Stony Island Arts Bank, which houses an archive relating to black culture, will be showcasing his gigantic record collection. It's unclear how it will be accessed - or even if it will be made generally available to the public, like a record library - but it's pleasing that the story of underground New York disco turning into Chicago house (and then heading out and taking over the world) is being physically documented in such Read more ...
Heidi Goldsmith
“How will I sing us out of this sorrow?" Björk wails over jagged cello arpeggios, six songs into her string quartet-led break-up album Vulnicura. Though heartbreak may be the theme most often stewed and chewed up by singer-songwriters, optimism - a belief in music's healing power - is the driving force of this nine-track record.Though we might wish Björk cried iridescent neon tears, the album's emotions are familiar enough to imagine her your snotty chapped-cheeked self. Albeit psychologically twisted by an accompaniment of legato strings that collide erratically with squelching beats. " Read more ...
Serena Kutchinsky
While Lady Gaga’s conceptual antics left the crowd cold in Camden last Sunday, Björk’s Ally Pally spectacular last night showcased the musical artistry that sets her so far above other female pop pretenders. While Gaga’s affected oddities have always jarred with the mainstream sensibilities of her music, Björk’s strangeness perfectly fits and feeds her sound.In a career spanning almost four decades, the Icelander has matured from a punkish techno popper into one of music’s great innovators. A status confirmed by the global success of Biophilia – a twisted musical show and tell which boasts a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When an artist calls the people of their hometown their family, it's usually a metaphor. In the case of Björk Guðmundsdóttir it’s actually true. Reykjavik has a population of only 200,000 and everyone is somehow related. But she's more than just the capital's favourite daughter: to the outside world the diminutive singer has become as emblematic of Iceland as its volcanoes and midnight sun. In turn, the uniqueness of the country helps fuel Björk’s individualism.Her early work may be best remembered for a series of dance-pop singles, but there has also always been plenty of musical Read more ...
joe.muggs
An album that encompasses pan-global collaborations, iPad/Phone apps, internet jiggery-pokery, art installations, live multimedia shows and even a tuning system, with the “Ultimate Edition” of the album coming complete with a set of tuning forks to demonstrate this. As ever, Björk Guðmundsdóttir is showing no shortage of ambition. But is it any good?The unimaginative answer is: yes, if you like that sort of thing. Björk sounds so completely unlike anyone else, and so standard criteria don't apply. There is a notably meditative air to many of the tracks, though, as demonstrated on the opening Read more ...