Björk by Sam Falls | Violently Appy

Following the brilliant cover, we have the main Dazed & Confused August 2011 editorial featuring Björk with photography and artwork by Sam Falls and styling by Katy England. Courtesy of - Homotography

Video Premier Bjork's Crystalline Directed by Michel Gondry

The new video for Bjork's 'Crystalline' has been released and the stop-motion/computer animated feature is as spell-bounding as the track itself. Bjork is set as a encased god in the sky watching the atmosphere pierce down upon a lunar planet focused in a way only French film, commercial, and music video director Michel Gondry can create.

We filmed the clip still by still, exposing the film several times. I decided that, in the clip, the meteor shower would fall onto the ground and make a sound. The idea of a ray of light provocating an impact on those things and making them move intrigated me. Then, they create wavelets, just like rain. On the third verse, they create bubbles where metallic objects appear. All this resulted from several conversations I had with Björk about these matters.

Gondry is a long time collaborator on many of the Icelandic goddess' videos and 'Crystalline' is another great creation for Bjork's 1st single off her latest album Biophilia schedule for release on September 26, 2011.

Bjork Releases Crystalline

The mouth of Bjork has opened and out comes the first single off her upcoming seventh album Biophilia the chanting and industrialized 'Crystalline'. UK producers 16bit had this to say about the track they created with Bjork.

"Crystalline" is a mostly electronic song, featuring a continuous 'gameleste' base and electronic beats and rhythm. After the bridge, the song features a gameleste solo, and consequently ends with an uproarious breakcore section which uses the Amen break. The soundscape seems to be a hybrid of the musical stylings of her previous albums Vespertine and Volta, with undercurrent percussive elements from her Homogenic album

Turn off the TV, close the doors, take a breath and turn up the debut of Crystalline below!




"Underneath our feet
Crystals grow like plants
Listen how they grow
I'm blinded by the lights
Listen how they grow
In the core of the Earth
Listen how they glow

Crystalline
Internal nebula
Crystalline
Rocks growing slow but
Crystalline
I conquer claustrophobia
Crystalline
And demand the lights

We mimic the openness
Of the ones we love
Daft till our generosity
Equalizes the flow
With our hearts
We kiss our quartz
To reach love

Crystalline
Internal nebula
Crystalline
Rocks growing slow but
Crystalline
I conquer claustrophobia
Crystalline
And demand the lights

Octagon, polygon
Pipes up an organ
Sonic branches
Murmuring drone
Crystalizing galaxies
Spread out like my fingers

Crystalline
Internal nebula
Crystalline
Rocks growing slow but
Crystalline
I conquer claustrophobia
Crystalline
And demand the lights

It's the sparkle you become
When you conquer anxiety
Sparkle you become
Conquer anxiety
Sparkle you become
When you conquer anxiety
It's the sparkle you become
When you conquer anxiety""

Bjork Sneek Peek 'Road to Crystalline' with Her Ipad in Tow

Bjork has released a video of her very own self driving (Yes DRIVING! and its a stick shift - Bjork can do it all!) where we presume is in her homeland of Iceland listening to her very own new track entitled 'Road to Crystalline'.

The track is off her upcoming album Biophilia which has been described as "most ambitious work to date".

When Apple announced details of its iPad early last year, it acted as a catalyst for what would become Biophilia, Björk's seventh and most elaborate album, the title of which means "love of life or living systems". Along with a conventional album release, complete with music videos – at least one of which has been directed by Eternal Sunshine's Michel Gondry – Biophilia will also be released as an "app album" and premiered as a multimedia live extravaganza at MIF.

Biophilia for iPad will include around 10 separate apps, all housed within one "mother" app. Each of the smaller apps will relate to a different track from the album, allowing people to explore and interact with the song's themes or even make a completely new version. It will also be an evolving entity that will grow as and when the album's release schedule dictates, with new elements added. Scott Snibbe, an interactive artist who was commissioned by Björk last summer to produce the app, as well as the images for the live shows (which will combine his visuals with National Geographic imagery, mixed live from iPads on the stage), describes how Björk saw the possibilities of using apps, not as separate to the music, but as a vital component of the whole project. "Björk's put herself way at the forefront here by saying, 'We'll release this album and these apps at the same time and they're all part of the same story.' The app is an expression of the music, the story and the idea."

For one song, Virus, the app will feature a close-up study of cells being attacked by a virus to represent what Snibbe calls: "A kind of a love story between a virus and a cell. And of course the virus loves the cell so much that it destroys it." The interactive game challenges the user to halt the attack of the virus, although the result is that the song will stop if you succeed. In order to hear the rest of the song, you have to let the virus take its course. Using some artistic license, the cells will also mouth along to the chorus. It's this determination to fuse different elements together – be it juxtaposing a female choir from Greenland with the bleeps and glitches of electronic music pioneers Matmos during the Vespertine tour, or meshing soaring strings and jagged beats on the Homogenic album – that helps explain the power and success of Björk's collaborations.

Talking to Pitchfork back in 2007, Björk outlined the importance of being "really loyal and precious about collaboration", taking her time to find the right people and remaining faithful to previous collaborators – the whole Biophilia project, for example, is being art-directed by M/M (Paris), with whom she's worked since 2001's Vespertine album. "I don't think you should even go into [a collaboration] unless you think it's the absolute right thing to do, and that you have equal things to give each other," she added.

"Björk is the master collaborator," confirms Snibbe. "She has a really strong vision, but she's really open and welcoming to ideas from her collaborators."

Another of Björk's Biophilia cohorts was an Icelandic organ maker called Björgvin Tómasson, who received a call from her last summer. Following a meeting in Iceland, Tómasson was given the job of creating two brand new instruments: one, a small organ controlled via MIDI equipment, allowing Björk to play it using a computer; the other, an old celeste that was rebuilt to incorporate the sounds of a traditional gamelan (Björk refers to this new hybrid instrument as a "gameleste"). "Prior to this experience, I would never have thought of the possibility of doing anything like this to a 100-year-old instrument," Tómasson says. "A new instrument was created in that moment."

In a career noted for its constant evolution, Biophilia represents Björk's biggest leap forward. While her previous work has focused mainly on the inner self and the minute details, this album and app project explodes the scope on to the macro level, taking in the entire universe and drawing far-reaching parallels between the ever-evolving technological landscape and the natural landscape around us. It proves once again that Björk is an artist who's unafraid to step into the unknown • Courtesy of guardian.co.uk

Take a drive with Bjork and her 'Road to Crystalline' which is expected to release late June.

björk - road to crystalline from Björk on Vimeo.

BJÖRK UNVEILS LIVE RESIDENCY

Icelandic genius and all-around best female singer and visonary of the 20th/21st century Bjork, returns to planet earth with a new album and interactive tour that will undoubtly be grander then anything we have ever seen. Below Dazed Digital explains the experience Bjork and her team will create and tour.

This summer, Björk introduces Biophilia, an extraordinary immersive project and her most ambitious work to date. The multi-media endeavour encompasses her music, installations and live shows, and celebrating the use of modern technology by utilising the internet. The project aims to explore ideas like how sound works, the infinite expanse of the universe, from planetary systems to atomic structures.



The world premiere of Björk's Biophilia live show will be held at Manchester International Festival for a three-week residency - across six intimate shows in the Campfield Market Hall for audiences of 1800, as her first UK dates in over three years. For these six special shows, Björk will be performing new tracks from the forthcoming Biophilia studio album as well as with a small group of unique musical collaborators. The show will feature a range of specially conceived and crafted instruments, among them a bespoke digitally-controlled pipe organ; a 30 foot pendulum that harnesses the earth’s gravitational pull to create musical patterns - creating a unique bridge between the ancient and the modern; a bespoke gamelan-celeste hybrid; and a one-off extraordinary pin barrel harp.



In a special collaboration with MIF, the Biophilia live show will travel to major cities around the world following the Manchester premiere. MIF will also be working with young people in Manchester to explore the musicological, scientific and technological ideas behind the project. In a series of educational workshops schoolchildren will be given the unique opportunity to experience the world of Biophilia first hand, and to immerse themselves in the endlessly rich and inspiring place where cutting edge technology, music and nature meet.



Björk Biophilia, Campfield Market Hall, Campfield Avenue Arcade, Manchester, M3 4FH; June - July 2011

Dig the song below entitled, 'Solar System' from Bjork's upcoming release.

Björk - Biophilia - Solar System - "Science Project" - With Michel Gondry