Quotes

Einar is one of my best friends. l’ve always known music is my heart, while others in the
Sugarcubes were poets. Einar’s BA was in Media Studies, now he works on the Internet. For me, doing interviews was just an excuse to go back and do more music. For hirn it was the opposite. He’s obsessed with communication, I don’t think he looked on himself as a singer.

He’s still one of my closest friends, I love him to death. It’s funny, the core of me and Einar is very similar but the way we communicate is completely different. That’s why we worked together for ten years. He’s very outrovert but when I’m at my best I’m very introvert and private and inside the music.

i am so incredibly grateful that the hamrahlíð choir and it’s original conductor þorgerður ingólfsdóttir came on tour with me . i was myself in this choir when i was 16 and i think every single icelandic musician you have ever heard of was brought up and musically baptised by this miraculous woman . she is a legend in iceland and has guarded optimism and the light in the tumultuous times that teenagedom is . she has also encouraged and commissioned dozens of choir music from all of icelands most prominant composers for half a century or so . ⁣⁣
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i am absolutely beyond honoured ⁣⁣
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warmthness⁣⁣
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love and respect ⁣

Then I met Thor when I was 16 and it was love at first sight. I moved into his house the same evening.

I can get lost in this. It’s pure joy, this music. It’s a bit of an escapism, from all the intellectual conversations and arguments you have in your life, and just being silly and happy and stupid, but it’s pure, as pure as pure can get. You just want to dance on the table. The Sugarcubes wanted Benny and Björn to produce our second album, but they didn’t want to. We were naturally upset.

Reprise de Dancing queen par The Sugarcubes

( About his book "The Rest Is Noise : Listening to the Twentieth Century" )

There seems always to have been a ‘crisis of modern music,’ but by some insane miracle one person finds the way out. The impossibility of it gives me hope. Fast-forwarding through so many music-makers’ creative highs and lows in the company of Alex Ross’s incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone’s fire for music

ndlr : Paru en 2008 aux Etats-Unis, Alex Ross a été finaliste pour le prix Pulitzer dans la catégorie "essais", et a figuré dans le "Top Ten" de journaux tels que The Washington Post, The Economist ou Newsweek.

I haven’t seen many fashion shows in my life, but you go to his shows and you come out feeling like anything is possible. He is a guy with a powerful and fluid mind who could direct films, build castles, and write music.

The whole alternative thing, I think, has gotten a bit stuck. But there are bands out there that I like very much now. Like the Breeders girls, they are so great - their attitude is so fresh and so modern. And I really admire Courtney Love as well. And with Madonna, I’m not going to go into the things she’s done for women. You’d fall asleep, there are so many.

I enjoy so much how she has expanded herself emotionally but never bursts.

I’ve been listening to her for years, but I just watched a documentary about her – so much raw emotion ! And free of so many complications that music has sometimes. The music is just very direct, simple and strong, free of filigree. She’s direct to the heart. Her intimate collaboration with Portugal’s poets is admirable. She definitely stuck by her rifles. And it’s good to know that she was part of making the fado style. I first came across it, I would guess, 15 years ago. It has the same rawness as flamenco but it’s less flamboyant, and more stern and stark somehow.

The Art of Amália, de Bruno de Almeida, 2000

( Annie Lennox did a cover of ’Mama’ from The Sugarcubes )

It’s the only time I’ve heard another person sing my lyrics and I was very chuffed about that. Chuffed is kind of a combination of grateful and flattered, and speechless.

Le titre a été produit par Marius de Vries.

Music for me is like fact. Totally like algebra. And he’s the total opposite, Antony. He’s kind of more esoteric and feeling his ancestors singing through him - it’s more about humans. For me, it’s not about humans. In a weird way it’s about maths and physics. Sorry," she adds, sitting back down again, "I got a bit excited."

Can you remember the first time you heard Anthony And The Johnsons ? Where you were and how you did it affect you ?

I was in my kitchen in New York. Someone brought me this then unreleased album. I thought it was a black woman.

How did the collaborations with Antony Hegarty on your new album come about ?

Well, we have mutual friends in New York so I sort of met him and he came to Iceland to play and I was showing him stuff and he came to a club so it was the most organic musical relationship on this album. In the end we decided, with three days notice, to go to Jamaica. It’s only a three-hour flight [from New York] and we found a cheap studio on the internet. So we were swimming in the ocean and eating fruit from the trees and singing, which is the opposite of what we as northern hemisphere, white-skin-andblack-clothes people normally do.

Were you a fan of his voice ?

Yeah I was. I didn’t pick up on it immediately, but I think he has incredible potential. I think his best stuff is yet to come and he played me his new stuff a week ago in New York and it’s amazing. I think I can say we are friends now. And I don’t use that word lightly. Most of my friends are from Iceland since I was a kid.

We talk about working together all the time. But since I’m always touring, he suggested I would send him a tour diary, sing on his answer phone, since he is particularly fond of the sound in his answerphone and he would then sample, mix, ot to put it short **** with it.I can’t wait. And yes, I toured with him.

I obviously saw a gigantic musician in him. I felt that he’d gone into my world with such elegance and dignity… that I wanted to meet on a more equal basis. It’s my album for sure, and he makes his albums and has his name on it – but as a pure musician, we decided to enter this other world, this other island, which is this sort of Arca-Björk overlap.

I’m kinda shy about spelling it out, but put simply : I love you so much and am forever grateful for your gift as a musician to me. I was at a time in my life where I felt monogamy was taken from me, and monogamy in music-making offered to me. Like a miracle. The timing of it was mind blowing.

I saw 2 years ago them trying to work out the plot in "Human Behaviour" I felt very honored about the attention there.

I love her voice, but maybe not what she stands for. I’m really pissed off she’s doing all of those commercials. I can’t believe she did Pepsi. Doing that is like selling your soul to the devil. Maybe it’s different in America and I’m judging too hard.

He loves fashion so much, so it’s this very rich, interesting conversation between us now. It’s not a boring, narcissistic exercise of, ‘Ooh, which dress do I want to wear ?’,” she says. Merry is responsible for those distinctive masks, whizzed up out of everything from latex to copper to lace, as well as about a million other things. “I feel incredibly lucky,” says Merry. “My job has evolved like 26,000 times over the past 15 years, which I’ve loved. But we have similar tastes, and we’re both very much about intuition and following the scent of something.

i would like to thank the magnificently talented kasimyn for sending me rhythms in the digi-post and trusting me in editing them into atopos and couple of other songs on fossora . and also thank him and GMO for supplying music to domestic raves in iceland last few years : your music has an undeniable signature-DNA that unifies gracefully authentic balinesian rhythms and techno and delivers them into the 21st century

I think they just cracked me up. I just really like how Kas, the guy who does the music and the one I collaborated with, combines rhythms from gamelan music and uses both authentic Balinese instruments, but also techno sounds.

I do share this vision with Kas, that I like to have very Icelandic things, and be very, very Icelandic and feel this kind of authenticity of Iceland run through me or hopefully through my work.

Meredith Monk is one of the most important composers alive. i remember hearing her "dolmen music" as a teenager. it most definitely provided me with one of my musical dna’s. i learned that vinyl by heart. " as a person she is a fierce spirit, optimistic, spiritual and soulful. we have talked deeply about urban versus rural, she has inspired me in her folk music how she has tackled the modern city and her music been a soulful natural element : an oasis in a toxic environment. in this way she is most generous. providing modern folks with strands of their ancestors dna, her minimalism is not about irony or the banality or repetition of mass production. it is about breaking down a hole in the wall between us and our roots as humans sitting by fires and singing together. it is international global folk music. ancient and modern : timeless.

I’m obsessed. I think they’re tops. A lot ot my friends don’t get what l’m on about. I just think it’s got character and a sense of in-div-id-ual-ity which a lot of music in general hasn’t got.

I’ve never really gotten into him. His voice is too nasal. And it’s like literature music. Quite boring three-chord structures serve as a bed for words. I’m too much of a music lover for that to happen.

You started recording and perfoming when you were 11. Did you ever had a moment when you almost broke down and shave your head like Britney Spears ?

I definitely have sympathy for her, but I don’t identify with her so much, because I had a choice. I could move away, and she can’t. I mean, even though she would move to Hong Kong or Africa or whatever, she wouldn’t escape it. And that’s scary. It was scary to look at the headlines when she was photographed without her knickers. There were obvisously hundreds of paparazzi forced in her face, and the headline was : "Attention Seeking Brtiney". I’m embarassed because this actually shows how much I’ve been following it !

About ’Me & ; U’ (Cassie)

Just perfect compact pop. Simple sassy lyrics. Understated vocals, you sort of feel all the things she could have sung but didn’t.

Yes ! She’s wonderful.
I had several moments when we were shooting...
we were working sometimes 16 hours a day every day for months.
Including weekends.

Spending so much tme with the actors and everyone, I still managed to have several moments when I would look into Catherine’s eyes, and get wobbly knees... because of how beautiful she is !

I’m definitely heterosexual, and she still has that effect on me.

She’s amazing. Very, very strong. Very, very graceful. Very kind.

She was very protective toward me, and I really appreciated it. The fact that I was doing it so instinctively and that somebody so experienced was saying, ’You’re right. Just do it that way,’ was very important to me. That’s the best thing that can happen to you when you’ve never acted before and just know that it has to be this way.

We argued about all music on the tour bus but the two things we could all agree on was Abba and Chet Baker. I’d say Baker is my favourite vocalist of the century. There were two albums, both with the same title, ridiculously, which were released with Bruce Weber’s film of his life, Let’s Get Lost. One was recorded when the film was being made, when he was older, and the other with all the stuff he sung when he was young, which I prefer.

I wouldn’t say he’s an influence as I didn’t hear him until much later in my life, but he’s the only singer I’ve ever been able to identify with. I love the fact he’s so expressive, so over-emotional. It’s classic stuff ; it makes me soft in my knees. He was a bit of a heroin casualty, silly guy, but you couldn’t tell he had a habit when he was younger. He was so into it, like, ’fuck those notes I’m singing, and fuck those songs I’m singing, what I want is the emotion’. That’s how I feel about it too.

He’s just there ! He’s so completely in the present. Even old and fucked up.

Most video directors have one trick that they use all the time. Then ther are people who build a whole world around them. Chris is like that. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg with Chris. He is only just coming into his own.

I think Chris has got an outrageous sense of beauty - and not only
beauty but hyperbeauty’ a heightened sensuality - but, at the same time,
his work can be quite morbid, quite dark. It can be like the highest
state of poetry, like water lilies and hams, lyrical and romantic and
very very dark and sincere.

About ’Ain’t Cha’ (Hell Hath No Fury)

Very effortless and musical hip-hop. It reminds me emotionally of some of the grace that sometimes came with Quincy Jones’s late ’70s stuff. "Hmm..." ? used as a chorus catch line, great ! Doubt with an exclamation mark ?!

I remember going to the London store with Nellee Hooper in about 1992. It was definitely the most sacred store I’d been in yet. I was tiptoeing around and found it uncomfortable to speak to the personnel. They might catch the greedy look in my eye. In person, Rei reminded me of my grandmother — a much younger, Japanese version. She wad confident, calm, not falling for any pressure to take part in small talk or other social behaviors, not moving out of her integrity zone for others. i think she has definitely proved that it is possible to be that brave, that it is possible to jeep on’s integrity.

I always feel very precious about Comme des Garçons just because I’ve been wearing it for so many years, and even before I could afford it, just knowing that they were doing what they were doing made me happy. It was like, Yes ! Go, girl !

i remember how walking into your stores would free me from the typical “civilized” western femme archetype and be more androgyne, creature like.

She’s 80 years old, you know !

She’s this tough old lady who lives right at the top of a high-rise building in New York, plays her harp out on the balcony and smokes cigars. I don’t think she quite knew what to make of me because her music was so moving I kept bursting into tears. But that’s why I love working with people - it’s my favourite thing because they bring out so many different parts of you. I don’t feel a need to be by myself. I don’t get it. It’s like masturbating, or talking to yourself or living on your own in a house, I’d much rather be around people, communicating, and that’s how I like to make music.

We’d met Crass at the time we were running this organisation in Iceland called Bad Taste, before we formed The Sugarcubes, when lots of people came over to play, including Crass. They heard our band, KUKL, play and offered us a deal. I was 18 at this point and had never been to England, so I couldn’t relate to Margaret Thatcher. It was very hard for Icelandic people who were still a bit in the middle ages.

I kind of look at myself as a David Attenborough kind of figure, he used to be my idol when I was a kid. He’s like the narrator. That’s what I do with the music, l’m such a fan of all the sounds and notes and everything, I could step out of my singing. That’s probably what David Attenborough would like to do, just get people there and watch the snails have sexual intercourse, or whatever they do on nature programmes. Introduce the two together, the audience and the animals, or what I do, the audience and the music.

I was into Albert Einstein and David Attenborough. I really lusted after him.

There is such a big chunk of me that is David Attenborough, I think he is my biggest inspiration.

I have always seen myself as a discoverer, and I think we share this. It is as if he is the interpreter between the natural world and your gran who’s sat at home watching television. In a similar way I interpret an audio world which is also shared with people.

My hero as a kid was David Attenborough. I was brought up on him. But he’s everybody’s hero, isn’t he ? Have I seen Once More Into The Termite Mound ? No, I haven’t. But apart from David Attenborough, I didn’t really have heroes as a kid. I think I had more heroes when I was older, after 20.
Before 20, I didn’t need people so much, or I wasn’t conscious of it. But after 20, I needed people to identify with. Of course, really, everybody’s biggest heroes are their best friends, and the people who’ve helped you with your work.

Derek is a strange guy. He thinks that all the people on his label should have the best, and he thought I would be better off on a big label than with him.

I went to a lot of meetings, met a lot of people. Derek’s met thousands of people because there was a slight possibility that he would be my manager and I wouldn’t be on One Little Indian. But on most major labels, too many cooks spoil the soup. The A&R man has a say, the marketing man has a say, and the whole lot of them can make a real mess.

Because my album is doing quite well now, the same record companies who would have messed it all up want a piece of the cake. But it was Derek’s work, his trust let me do it. There was one company I almost signed to for the rest of the world, that said : ’Yes, it’s so great, I love how Derek let you do anything you wanted to, let vou have artistic control. You can make all the choices, but by the way, can we change everything ? Can we hire this person to fuck it all up’ ?

One of my teenage loves, music that for me doesn’t grow old. Extremely sexy.

"Didda and I broke away
from our parents together. We left school at fourteen, shared a room and
then a flat - we were always together, it was so intense. We weren’t
having sex but we might as well have been. She was very macho and always
getting into fights, and I would go around in my pink coat carrying a
little handbag, ever the Miss Sensible.

Didda’s got so much intergrity. I’ve seen some
pretty dark sides of some dark people, and they get lost in them. But
Didda’s quite comfortable on the dark side - she’s kind of a consultant
to me.

I’m completely fascinated by Indian string sections, and have been for a while. The music is completely sensual, and very pretty, and again, more to do with instincts than brains. I think my love of it has a lot to do with having to deal with England. I’m eventually falling in love with England, of course, but like all flirting periods, it’s a lot to do with being hard to get. When I tried to get into English culture, I always ended up going out and buying Indian music. I’m a visitor here : I call myself an immigrant housewife. I hang out with the Indians in Southall and go to Thai takeaways. Indian culture is beautiful, more so than the English. I felt some sort of sup- port, or sympathy there. I felt like I belonged there.

I don’t know much about Bappi Lahriri. I just know that if I buy 10 Indian albums, and one is by Bappi, I’m safe. Snake Dance is a film soundtrack which me and Nellie really got into when we were making my album, and ended up sending two of my songs to Bombay where Indian strings were recorded. Indian soundtracks have this incredibly pure sound. They’ve tried to record string sections in England, top quality microphones, top quality Indian musicians, the lot, but it’s just not the same. Tarvin Singh, who plays with my band and who works a lot in Bombay, told me that the sound engineers there are so used to working under poor conditions that their ears are incredible, and they can get that particularly earthy sound. Apparently tabla players all surround one microphone, and they can tell exactly who it is who is playing out of tune.

I was obsessed with this Japanese guy online. He’s a student who works in this rehearsal studio in Japan. He’s obsessed with tuning peoples guitars and stuff. He started this website doing acapella versions of songs by people like Slayer and Stevie Wonder, but he does all the instruments. I got him to sing on one of my songs.

I’m always looking for acapella sites online with all these perverts. I have to forward you the Slayer version he does - the double drums are amazing.

I’ve actually asked her before and we’ve talked about doing something together at some point. I think she’s amazing, I’m like her biggest fan.

Well, there are not that many poets that have won me over. I tend to read certain poets over and over again, and E.E. Cummings is one of them. I was reading a lot of him these last three years. I ended up just writing a song. It’s hard to say why these things happen because most things just grow naturally, like a plant, on this record.

But looking back on it, I think he’s very interested in climaxes — in the divine and euphoric states. But what is special about him is that he’s always humble. It’s very common for people who are really into peaks and crowns, and euphoric states that they go really pompous and … [makes poof sound] sort of Wagner-like. Which he never, ever, ever … I guess that’s something I found really curious — that you can go to the sharpest peak ever, but it’s completely humble.

In one of the songs, Sun in My Mouth, I’ve only created the music for e.e.cummings’ verses ; I found his poetry in a bookshop and I liked its euphoric humbleness, it’s a state of mind that fascinates me. Most of the things that cause euphoria end up becoming grandiloquent, but it doesn’t happen with e.e.cummings. He always remains humble.

I didn’t even know he existed because I’m more familiar with Icelandic and other European things. I was introduced to his writing, like, five years ago. It’s the first person I read who I just immediately wanted to sing his words. I have read a lot of poetry, but never stuff where I felt like, Oh, I want to make this mine ! But it’s so different with him. I can’t put my finger on it. He’s kind of euphoric, but humble at the same time.

He also has a way of breaking things up into smaller fragments, like something broke and he’s putting it back together in a different way. I can see why you would love e.e. cummings.

It goes so well in the mouth ! It’s weird. He’s somebody who was born in Boston 100 years ago. What would I have in common with him ? But yeah, it’s one of those few times when somebody writes something and you sort of wish you could have written it. But it’s just, like, 10 times better because it’s easy to do lyrics. It’s kind of slogans, you know ? But e.e. cummings’s poetry is all the little bits in between.

My favourite painter. He was a sailor, a pirate, who sailed all over the world all his life, all over the planet, and when he was 75 decided to quit and paint everything he’d seen. This is an original, this painting of a tiger in the Himalayas who bit off people’s heads. (Points to striking yellow painting on kitchen wall featuring child-like mushroom trees and a dead woman elevating on her own hair.) I think it’s incredible, the colours and the way there’s ghosts in there. He saw these things.

Were you inspired by Einstürzende Neubauten when you wrote the song "Cvalda" ?

Yeh. When I was pregnant I visited a Neubauten-concert. The foetus started moving vigorously because of the loud music, so I had to run out of the concert hall. But I still like Neubauten, they’re a great source of inspiration for me.

At the same time as Joni, I got into Debussy at my grandparents’ house, especially his dramatic little piano pieces, and I got into jazz. I love the way Ella and Louis work together : they were opposites in how they sung, but were still completely functional together, and respectful of each other.

My favourite bit of Ella is from the Jazz At The Hollywood Bowl album, the one where she forgets the lyrics. She goes, ’I forgot the lyrics to this song, be bop be bop, I forgot the lyrics to this song, be bop be bop’, which I thought was great.

I’ve always liked Ella because she’s really happy. I’ve never been into all these suffering artists, I think it’s a bit pathetic. You have your problems, but you have to go one step further, and see the funny side of it. Everybody has problems, not only Morrissey. That’s why I’ve always preferred Ella to Billie, even though Billie is the singer of the century and all that shit, but I think it’s much braver to be happy than to be suffering, taking heroin and all that. Ella was strong enough not to bore the audience with her own difficult life.

I saw her sing at the Montreux Jazz Festival when I was 15 : she was 60, with white hair, but exactly the same greatest sense of humour. She’s always teasing people. I guess her singing was an influence on me but not in a direct sense, more in the sense that you shouldn’t take melodies too literally. It’s a bit irrelevant what a melody is like in a song : the point is more the mood, and the emotions, and it doesn’t matter if you forget the lyrics. You can still sing the song. You can do whatever you want to.

I was looking for someone that could orchestrate my songs in order to create a texture. Eumir is very melodic, which is wonderful, but in Vespertine I wished to give the strings a more distant role, a panoramic texture.

I attempted to make string arrangements, with a lot of help from Eumir. He’s been like a big daddy, letting me experiment with notes but still being there for me when I need him, and sometimes just completely doing it for me.

Evelyn
Glennie is one of the people I’ve had the good fortune of meeting. She

is an amazing percussionist, one of the most respected in the classical
world. She’s the same age as me which is quite young for that field.
She’s amazing.

We heard that when you first came to London, you didn’t understand it until you watched French and Saunders...

I think I was saying that when I lived there I didn’t really watch television except for comedy. But that’s England for you. Comedy is so important there.

Did you see when Dawn French did that piss-take of you rolling around in the back of a lorry ?

Yeah, it was when I was there. I sent her a letter and thanked her.

You weren’t insulted ?

No ! Come on ! You’ve got to have a laugh, right ?

He’s irresistible, isn’t he ? It’s his energy : kind of unpredictable and impulsive. Fuck logic - that’s what he’s about.

There’s a song on her new album called It’s Heaven And Hell (Being Geri Halliwell).

About how difficult it is to be a star ? It’s pretty pathetic, innit ? But I shouldn’t slag anyone off, really.

You’re collaborating with Goldie for a track on his new album.

Well, I was going to go today, but my voice is a bit scruffy. I just talked to him last night. I’m just gonna wait, ’cause I want to be at my best. He’s played me the tune. The album is outrageous. It’s so good, so good. He didn’t compromise one bit, he didn’t compromise to anything including the whole drum’n’bass scene or whatever. He didn’t even compromise to them, to nobody.

Goldie and I would play music for each other and argue about it, but really enjoy it. I would play him string things for 24 hours, Prokofiev and Debussy, and he would just play me drum’n’bass till I was going, Give me a break ! And so he did, ha ha ! Sorry - accidental joke there.

Graham Massey was a real catalyst for me in the fact that I went out and did my own stuff. After being in a band with the same people for ten years, and part of me thinking and quite liking the fact that I would always be in Iceland and with my cuddly family and friends, and going on tour with the Sugarcubes, that was enough. Then, musically, I was craving something that didn’t fit into all that, and I felt slightly criminal by wanting something even more than that. So the person I contacted in ’89 or ’90 was Graham Massey, when I called I shyly asked if he wanted to hear my demos and whenever I went over and visited he was always completely enthusiastic and paternal. He would show me his record collection and funnily enough we both had the same collections, one of Reykjavik and one of Manchester music - it was quite similar in certain ways. Whilst I was still touring with The Sugarcubes he would make me compilation cassettes of stuff and I would make him some too, but I have a feeling that his tapes, at that pint in my life, had more of an effect on me that mine had on his. We would do demos, and that was very important to me. I would write songs and then do stuff with Nellee Hooper later on and I would play this to Graham, and get his advice, and just know that he believed in me which was quite important to me.

I’d got the their album ( 808 State) in 1990. I hadn’t heard that much foreign bands so when the Sugarcubes started travelling in ’88, I was like dying, and I’d go to concerts in Camden and walk in there and my first shock was like, it’s crap, there’s nothing creative here, because I’d built it up in my head.

And then I ended up going to a club, and saw that energy at that time,’88, there. If you went to clubs enough and waited ’til five or six in the morning, there would eventually come up a live DJ, and you would hear music you’d never heard before, ever. And obviously, 808 State,
because they just had that sort of that intellectual rhythm. I’ve always been really into rhythms. It wasn’t just like a "doof-doof-doof" ; it was very vibrant and they were physical, probably one of the few very physical English bands at that time. So I went to visit him and found we’d got a very similar record collection.

The person that was definitely something so creative was Graham, and we were making each other tapes, back and forth, and we wrote two songs together, and we were talking about a lot of stuff. And I guess the people I met, and I just met on the club scene, Nellee Hooper, who had
done Soul II Soul, which I didn’t know anything about, because it was too fashionable to get over to Iceland. It was sort of the era of Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys.

I think in Iceland people go more for rough stuff. And also the whole black thing is something we don’t really understand in Iceland. It was very interesting ; we’d talk a lot. In a certain way, me and Graham were too similar, we kind of agreed on everything.

Guy Sigsworth is someone that Talvin introduced me to when Debut sold more than 20 times more than it was expected, as it was such a small and eccentric album. So we had to put together a tour in like two weeks or something, despite the album not being made to be played live. This is when I was introduced to Guy Sigsworth. I think on the first tour I didn’t have very exciting jobs for him, I gave him something like a few one finger keyboard lines. He then did the second tour which is was when he was actually the MD, where we started finding each others musical tastes, after being on tour buses for four years. It slowly built up like all good musical relationships. We started working together in 1993 and it wasn’t until 1997 when we did Unravel, and it had built up to a point where we actually walked into a studio and half an hour later and we had a song ready to be mixed. We had got to know one another’s insides so well. Vespertine was then an album where we wanted to go even further.

My mother’s spirit is inside of me, definitely. I can see that now, that
same desire to keep on moving, to keep seeking out new sensations, new
locations. We are very close, my mother and I, and I sometimes think we
are like the same person now.

If only I could get her to do my interviews for me, that would be
bliss.

I always fall for people who can create a complete universe, a bubble. It’s also rare that you find someone who makes the videos as well as acting them. It’s hard to get away with it, but when it works, it hit the bullseye.

He’s the only Icelander to win the Nobel Prize. In 1950 I think. He’s just pure genius. He’s written the definitive Icelandic literature. He deals with a lot of the problems the Icelandic people have with self-image, and I think the image most Icelandic people have of Iceland these days is through him. He’s an author big-time - he’s about humanity, love, philosophy, and all his novels are completely different, like 50 of them and every one is a different world, political subjects, everything. He’s The Author, the one we all quote, like English people would with Shakespeare.

I’ve known him for seven years and he engineered a lot of "Debut" and most of "Post" and he’s just one of my best mates, you know, and I’m just so pleased. Sometimes you really, really try to organise things and make them happen ? It can work for a lot of areas of your life but for your love life, it don’t work. You don’t go out and get it. I’m not even going to pretend I know, ’cause I don’t. But I recommend going out with your best mate ’cause you’re already great mates. Things can’t really go wrong.

Human League, you just can’t top them, right ?

He raises daily life to a level of something magical, he was born with these powers and it is a question of whether 50,000 business people are willing to go there with him.

When Hussein was starting out, in ’93, he had just come out of school and nobody knew who he was and we would meet for coffee and talk about his shows for three hours like lunatics.

I’m very much a person who has intimate musical relationships with people and they are almost like love affairs, you see. But I’m very loyal. So me and Nellee got through half the album and then we just stopped turning each other on. We remained friends, but we would just kind of know each other’s taste too much for it to be a surprise.

We named her Isadora because I didn’t want to press my Viking background and he didn’t want anything Christian. Isadora means "gift of Isis", referring to the pagan goddess of nature.

I’ve never been that big a James Brown fan, really, I don’t even have any of his records. Of course I think he’s a genius, but...just seeing him work was fabulous, and the music was even tighter than the recordings. And his 18 piece band...so tight. I mean, I hate entertainment, Las Vegas things, but this was just pure. He’s so professional it’s scary. Without losing any of the passion.

I’ve been a big fan since her first movie, Sweetie. She’s from New Zealand. I can just relate to her really well, her point of view. She seems a very down- to-earth, no-bullshit kind of woman, but at the same time quite spiritual, I guess. It all sounds like clichés when you say it, but I think I got a certain comfort from her because I was just getting pissed off with women moaning and complaining about everything, and she happened to be a woman director who was quite happy to be so, and quite proud to be so, and made a strong film with feminine strength in it.

I mean, I hate the majority of feminist movies. If I had the right opportunity and could get away with it, I would easily burn all that. But Jane Campion’s also pretty cool with guys as well, ’cos another pretty pathetic thing was women attacking blokes all the time, like it’s their fault. So that’s cool.

But at the end of the day, I just like Sweetie and An Angel At My Table. I’ve been too busy to see The Piano yet. I can just identify with her energy. It’s positive, matter-of-fact, but sort of spiritual, I guess. A lot of people have compared her to David Lynch, which I think is completely unfair because I think all his weirdness is done with a brain, it’s all clever and planned. It’s like, ’Let’s put a dwarf here, eating spaghetti’. It’s pretty cheap. I mean, I respect him, but with Jane Campion, things like that are so earthy and natural. You don’t think she’ll be happy to be put in the same category as a soup ? No, I think she’ll understand.

Jeff Mills is celebrating all the machines that we’re living with and being brave enough to find them pretty and not slagging them off all the time. It’s like all these people who say cars are so ugly, pollution’s so terrible - it’s true, but if you don’t want to live here then move into the forest. And if you are gonna live here, you might as well accept it and make the most out of it.

He’s a DJ from Chicago, very modern-thinking, very simple keyboards and he’ll just throw in the bin all the techno that doesn’t matter any more, keep what’s classic and add to it. He printed a vinyl record with eight grooves on it instead of one that goes in a spiral. Each groove has its own loop and goes on for ever and you move to the next one and it’s just wicked, man - that’s total concept, I’m sorry. Usually when you sample things you’re dealing with computer digits - it’s not physical anymore. I find that difficult. I like music to be physical whether it’s singing or the piano or keyboards. You can scream or if it’s quiet you’ll go on tip-toe but with a computer it’s ’let’s put in 0.995.’ After a whole day of that it’s too much brain and not enough instinct. So what he’s done is keep it physical - the loops are for scratching and that’s just a revolution for me. I used to DJ on Icelandic Radio. . . I’m the worst mixer in the world so I’d just play my favourite songs, had my own show. Oh, I’ve done it all !

He wrote a piece especially for my voice, which I was very flattered to do. It was excellent to be a "pistol in his hand." He’s an incredible man, one of the most powerful spirits I’ve ever worked with.

He wrote a piece especially for my voice, which I was very flattered to do. It was excellent to be a "pistol in his hand." He’s an incredible man, one of the most powerful spirits I’ve ever worked with.

He wrote a composition for me. I recorded it less then a month ago. He is a very special man and it was extraordinary to know him better. I think that working with him, and the use of chorals in my work maybe related.

I guess it will be easier to explain all this process in a few years, in a point distant from this moment, but I think I felt, above all, an enormous interest about humble music. Music related to prayer, that makes you fall on your knees to the ground and that creates a certain harmony. There is something naive and innocent that makes you go and search for pure and honest feelings.

I can’t explain why I’m so attracted to this kind of music but the truth is, I’ve been listening to Arvo Part and other composers. I wouldn’t say they influenced me in a musical way but I think they created the atmosphere, the space.

I’ve always written my own melodies, and John would listen to my records and then write something that suited my range. I was really touched. He’s amazing. He has this disease which is related to your heart where your bones never stop growing. I can’t remember what it is called. So he is really, really, really long. His fingers are really long, he has really long hair, a white suit, that’s too short for him and all this Greek Orthodox jewellery on his fingers. The doctors told him he was supposed to die five or ten years ago and he’s way past his time. So he lives every day like it’s his last. He’s obsessed with Greek red wine. When I first met him, I was really shy and he grabbed this bottle of wine, smashed it on the table and said : "So, what do you think about death ? [laughs] What is your favourite music, what was the greatest love of your life ?" So you get really drunk with him and a few hours later he’s playing ’The Sound Of Music’ and ’My Fair Lady’ on the piano, asking us all to join in.

Jonathan Ross just cracks me up. I don’t always agree with what he says but that’s not the point.

When I was 13, though, I got into Joni Mitchell with my dad, and played it to pieces. I loved Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter but Hejira was the one. It was more acoustic. I’ve always found guitars a bit difficult because my dad played since I was very little, and he was a bit of a Clapton and Hendrix kind of guitarist, and I’ve always been critical of that, but I loved her guitar sound very much, although it’s very hard to say why.

With hindsight, she was one of the first women I heard who weren’t completely stupid. She had her own air of style and independence, whereas a lot of women just wanted to play men’s music. I wasn’t so much into her voice, more that she had her own world, with her own elements. You definitely knew that it was Joni the second you heard her. It was very strong, but very feminine, you know ? It was natural and earthy but modern as well.

She was never my role model, though : I don’t think any singer was, to be honest. Instruments influenced me more than singers, like brass and stuff. You might start puking when I say it but I never had the ambition to be a singer, I always wanted to make good music. It’s like learning shorthand writing. It’s not so much that you’re into it, but it makes it easier to write anything. That’s why I sing.

It is hard to even begin to talk about what Joni Mitchell means to me.

The first record of hers I discovered was Don Juan’s Daughter ; I was around fourteen, fifteen and I knew it by heart (still do, every instrument, every noise, every word). I would love to cover sometime some of the songs of that album but they might be too sacred for me, too immaculate for me even to be able to suggest that they might be done in any other way. At that age my love for her was very intuitive and limitless with total ignorance of her meaning in North America in the hippy era, for example. I guess now later when I am a bit more knowledgeable about foreigners and history and context and such things I understand better her importance to the world and why she made such an impact on a teenage girl in Iceland (who had never left the island at that point, actually).

In a music-world ruled by males she continues to be the only one (except perhaps Kate Bush) who created an all-female universe with intuition, wisdom, intelligence, craftsmanship, and courage : had the guts to set up a world driven by extreme female emotion, almost any other female out there is fronting an already male-made sensibility. Joni got a group of musicians to play with her but they were following a female heart. This might not be the place to go into details ; I could write pages about it...for example her chord progression is very chromatic and grows like a plant, unpredictable and growing in all different directions (as you all know, she tuned her guitar strings very differently than others)...not the white Christian male c-g-f rock, boy-scout chords that are clean and square and deny the existence of nature. And there is no space to even go into her lyrics here, which are heavyweight literature, especially in the context of popular music.

And as I grow older I am forced to admit a very, very sad truth (something I promised I would never do, but...) : we are living in a rock white male world and because of this Joni is being ignored while someone like Bob Dylan for instance has become a saint.

This album has gathered musicians together to show a little of their love and respect for Joni Mitchell.

Let’s hope it takes part in inspiring the respect she deserves.

– Björk

Growing up in Iceland I had no knowledge of Joni’s impact on the whole hippy era and the Californian folk scene," she states. "I just fell in love with her music. To me, it seemed very pure and intuitive, like she just followed her heart and wasn’t influenced by anyone else. Most of the music around at that time was created by men and the few female songwriters what were around were usually backed by male musicians. In comparison, Joni created her own musical universe with female emotion, energy, wisdom courage and imaginations. I found that very liberating

And obviously, people like Joni Mitchell were very inspirational when I was younger because they created music that wasn’t men’s music. You know, when I was young, a lot of women just fronted men-universes – they were just the berry on top. And Joni Mitchell, seeing people like her play on TV - they weren’t anti-men, but the music they made was a woman’s world. An universe. And it was just the fact that it was possible was inspirational for me. It wasn’t like musically wanted to be like them or a singer, definitely not. I just thought that what they could create, this different place, was amazing."

Jórunn Vidar is a really grand old lady. When she studied composition in Berlin before the Second World War, she knew Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl, but I won’t go into that now. When I called her to ask about using her music, she said, ’Oh, it must be lovely having a little girl. She must be such an inspiration to you.’

I was a bit confused at first, because I hadn’t realised that the song is actually a lullaby that was written for a little girl with blue eyes. It’s so weird, because I’ve been working with that piece of music for four years now, and four years ago I had no clue that I was going to have a little blue-eyed girl of my own.

I went to music school from the age of five and then, when I was 12 or 13, I was into musicology and this Icelandic composer and teacher at the school introduced me to Stockhausen.

I remember being almost the fighter in the school, the odd kid out, with a real passion for music, but against all this retro, constant Beethoven and Bach bollocks. Most of it was this frustration with the school’s obsession with the past. When I was introduced to Stockhausen it was like ’aaah’ ! Finally somebody was speaking my language.

Stockhausen has said phrases like, "We should listen to ’old’ music one day a year and the other 364 days we should listen to ’now’ music. And we should do it in the same way as we look through photo albums of when we were children. If you look at old photo albums too often they just become pointless. You start indulging in something that doesn’t matter, and you stop worrying about the present. And that’s how he looked at all those people who are obsessed with old music.

For a kid born of my generation who was 12 at that time it was brilliant, because at the same time I was also being introduced to the electronic music of bands like Kraftwerk and DAF.

I think when it comes to electronic music and atonal music, Stockhausen’s the best. He was the first person to make electronic music before synthesis- ers were even invented. I like to compare him to Picasso for this century, because like him he’s had so many periods. There are so many musicians who’ve made a whole career out of one of his periods. He goes one step ahead, discovers something that’s never even been done before musically and by the time other people have even grasped it he’s onto the next thing.

Like all scientific geniuses, Stockhausen seems obsessed with the marriage between mystery and science, although they are opposites. Normal scientists are obsessed with facts : genius scientists are obsessed with mystery. The more Stockhausen finds out about sound, the more he finds out that he doesn’t know jack shit ; that he’s lost.

Stockhausen told me about the house he built himself in the forest and lived in for ten years. It’s made from hexagonal pieces of glass and no two rooms are the same, so they are all irregular. It’s built out of angles that are reflective and it’s full of spotlights. The forest becomes mirrored inside the house. He was explaining to me how, even after ten years, there would still be moments when he didn’t know where he was, and he said it with wonder in his eyes. And I said, "That’s brilliant : you can be innocent even in your own home", and he replied, "Not only innocent, but curious."

He’s such a humorist.

I like him not so much as a musician, more as a philosopher. I learned about him at school when I was about 11. He just had pretty cool ideas about the universe. He’s just pissed off with the world’s tendency to be conservative and not allowing you to go with the flow.

As a philosopher, he’s just a top person for the century. I agree more with him as a philosopher than with any other person. There are a lot of books that are on interviews he did and also collections of his lectures. It’s not like I was sort of learning about Jean-Paul Sartre and able to discuss his theories backwards and forwards, it’s just he had a certain view. Certain people have a view on things and they’re called phílosophers, I suppose.

I get so pissed off with people that think old times were great, and old music is great, and the ’70s were great, and they don’t look ahead, they’re scared to tear themselves away from the past and go forward. He just has this optimism about his views, which I like.

He is totally open, totally awake, not one cell in his body asleep. 68 years old he has childish interest in life. And he is very curious.

I was deeply honoured to meet him and ask him all those questions, that I have always longed to ask him. For me in musical context it was meeting God and get the change to ask him why the sky is blue and why we have two arms. When I went away I thought that this is how I want to be when I am old. Something like this has never happend to me before.

The composer of the century, German, a complete genius, still alive. His father died in World War II and his mum was mentally ill and sent to an asylum and put to sleep by the Nazis. Her dad went mad when he found out and signed up to some sort of suicide legion. So Stockhausen was left. He was one of the the first men to discover electronic music in 1950. Look ! [opens book at illustration of musical complexities in graph form which looks like the technological data for an Orbital gig] Like raves today, except now it’s kids’ stuff ! He discovered blips and blops and the electronic sound, complete innovator of the century, had 20 styles. He was asked to write a string quartet for Cologne two years ago and they wanted something safe, so he wrote a piece for four helicopters so people had to go on a hill and watch the four helicopters. He would get a whole orchestra on stage and give them a piece of paper which said that this is what they had to play : ’Think nothing. Wait until it’s absolutely still within you. As soon as you start to think, stop, and try to attain a state of non-thinking and continue to play.’ And that would be the piece of music he’d written. That gave rise to all these arguments about who wrote the music, the person who played it or him ? Fabulous. I wish he was my age. Look ! Isn’t he handsome ? I fancy him.

I remember being underneath my duvet at the age of 12, fantasising about Kate Bush- but I don’t want to make a big thing out of it. I would love it and hate it to be compared to Kate Bush, because I’d be very honoured to be compared to such a genius, but at the same time, it’s important to me that I have my own individuality and my own voice.

To me, Kate Bush will always represent the age of exploring your sexuality, when you change from a girl to a woman. All of that. There were so many records in my parent’s house, so I saw a lot of album covers. I thought they were all macho and occupied with power, things I didn’t like.

I guess that’s what I found fascinating about Kate, she totally stuck out. She was so - what’s the word - so complete. The music, the lyrics and the way she looked, it all made sense. Especially for a thirteen or fourteen year old girl. It was the first time I had my own bedroom. Even though my room had just enough space for a bed and a desk I felt like it was a palace. My grandad gave me a big blue lamp with a blue light...It was like walking into an aquarium. It was then that I found a Kate Bush album and..you can imagine the rest, right ? I used to close the door and didn’t want anybody to come in.

My favourite songs have changed over time. I really liked the one about Peter Pan. Obviously I loved ’Man With the Child in his Eyes’. Everybody adored Kate’s voice and a lot of people really noticed what she looked like but I think what is really underrated is the production. I think it’s really original and really feminine, but with more primitivity than women have, or what men would like to believe we have. If it had just been the voice and the look I’m not sure I would have been that into her - what’s so common, a girl that looks great and sings great. What’s very special about Kate Bush is that she didn’t do that. She created her own look and she produced her own sound.

There’s a timelessness to Kate’s music, for me personally it has a nostalgic feeling. It’s not to do with ’yes I listen to it’, it’s more to do with ’I listened a lot to it from thirteen to fifteen’. I think that for someone like me, there hasn’t been many ladies to look up to in the pop world. Then when I was sixteen I started growing out of it, coming back to it occasionally like a box of memories...

I’ve heard you’re a fan of Kate Bush, so I was wondering what you thought of her most recent album, Aerial ?

I really like it. It’s a double album. I think for me, to be brutally honest, I would have made a single album. It has equally as many strong songs as any of her other albums. I think it’s amazing and there’s a lot of songs on it that I listen to a lot. For someone like her I think it’s fantastic that she’s not been driven by outside forces, she’s just driven by herself. So I’ve got a lot of respect for her in that way. She’s very respected as a singer and a songwriter, but I think she’s very underestimated as a producer. She built a whole universe that was her own instead of just following a male...something. I don’t know, l’m not anti-male or anything.

I believe in diplomacy. Kofi Annan [the UN Secretary-General] is a great hero of mine – that element of trying to unite very different worlds.. right now I can do with a bit of hanging out just with my mates.

About ’Kubanufu’ (Notus)

A gorgeous song from southern Japan. I adore the vocal technique. Also the mood - kinda magical, and room for the listener. And the plucked strings rhythmic thing is almost modern sounding for such an ancient song !

I told him that I have no ambitions what so ever in being an actress. That I don’t have any wish to become a filmstar, but he refused to change his mind.

I like Lars precisely because he is always seeking conflicts. But he has also promised to support me to avoid a fiasco. I’m only his tool in this movie. I give up all my will to him. But like I said, I’m extremely excited about the music and I think about it 24 hours a day. Mediocrity has never been my strong point, has it ?

I didn’t know who he was before I got the offer to take part in "Dancer In The Dark", but then I saw "Breaking The Waves" and I loved it. It could be one of the best films made in the last ten years. Now I’m a big fan.

He’s very honest and he’s not false. He has the courage to be genuine. And he doesn’t compromise when it comes to emotions. When other people constricts their most extreme feelings, he dares to let them loose. He’s magic. When I saw "Breaking The Waves" I almost regarded it as physically violent. The emotions were so strong. I ran around in my house during the whole film. I couldn’t sit still, and that has never happened to me before when watching a movie. Afterwards I just felt like celebrating that there were other people with feelings as strong as mine, people who were like me. We’re hiding feelings to much in this world.

I think at the heart of him he’s Napoleon ; he’s not really a
hippie, you know. But he’s sweet, because he gets a lot of points for
trying. He really wants to be a free spirit, you know. He swallows his
Prozac and says, ’Hey, let’s improvise.

He hypnotises you. You just fall into a trance or
something. It’s like a drug or something, he can just make you do
whatever he wants.

Lars became cruel and manipulative and that was unnecessary because we had something really, really gorgeous that had taken off and taken its own life. All we had to do was protect it and make sure no-one disturbed it. I think he got scared and he got quite cruel in the last month, and that was what I did not agree with.

I do not think you have to scream to be cruel. I think you can watch that film and you can see. If you had never heard the rumours about what happened on set and just saw the film, I think it is very obvious that I was suffering.

Almost a decade after a once-controversial music video gained popularity and success for now-defunct rock band Faith No More, the video (for the band’s 1990 hit "Epic") returns from MTV purgatory to reap all-new controversy, thanks to techno-pop queen Björk.

"Yes, it was my fish" the spacey, brunette Icelander told CNN on Friday.

"There was a party at Roddy (Bottum, ex-Faith No More keyboardist)’s mansion in Berkeley and I was just coming from a poetry reading in San Francisco. I had been given the fish (which she admits to having named ’Linear Soul Child’) from a person at that poetry reading, and brought it to Roddy’s party. That’s the last time I ever saw him."

The fish, a common 3-finned goldfish, caused a media uproar from animal-rights groups the same year for supposedly being "flopped" on the ground during the video shoot. Faith No More insisted that the fish ’flopped only once’ despite allegations of animal mistreatment.

Björk, despite becoming emotionally upset in our interview over the loss of her would-be pet, comes to the defense of the group. "I know those guys, I know they wouldn’t do anything to harm [him]. But I know, if I had gone home with MY fish, which was given to ME, none of this would have ever happened." The former members of Faith No More declined to comment further on the incident.

I think M.I.A’s amazing. She’s really taking it on. She’s very important. The fact that she got heard, actually – I think that’s amazing. Thirty years ago, I’m not sure, maybe she’d be an eccentric somewhere. I mean, I remember when I was teenager that no one confessed they liked Kate Bush because she was so weird. She was always written about like ’crazy Kate’. Insane ! I don’t think she’s crazy at all, I think she seems like one of the most healthy people they are. Just because she knew what she wanted and she wasn’t a rock thing, she was weird. But I really have hope that all that is changing today, you know, everyone’s getting onto the right-brain hemisphere. Oh yeah, and more of them should listen to M.I.A.!

I’m not going to go into the things she’s done for women. You’d fall asleep, there are so many.

Well, name a few.

Just the fact that she made it look good to control your own life when that was something that was not supposed to be very sexy for a woman. She’s one of the few women who has remained true to herself and been a character.

She asked for ’something Björk’. She also wanted me to sing on the song, to make it a duet. I had written the song especially for her. But my intuition told me that it would be wrong for me to sing on the song. I also refused to meet her officially. When I finally meet her I want it to be totally by coincidence, when we’re both drunk in a bar or something like that.

I’d heard from a friend who interviewed Björk a few years ago that she wrote the line "Let’s get unconscious, honey," because those were the words she wanted to hear from Madonna. I ask her if this is true, and Björk responds :

I think at the time, yes. But that’s like six years ago, when everything around her seemed very controlled. I think she’s a very intuitive person, and definitely her survival instincts are incredible. They’re like, outrageous. At the time, the words I thought she’d say were, ’I’m not using words anymore, let’s get unconscious, honey. Fuck logic. Just be intuitive. Be more free. Go with the flow.’ Right now, she seems pretty much to be going with the flow.

This prompts me to ask Björk if she thinks she might have put those mellowing-out thoughts into Madonna’s head.

Well, I wouldn’t credit myself for that. Not at all. That’s a question for you to ask her.

(I send a fax to Madonna, via her publicist Liz Rosenberg, with the question : "Did singing the lyrics Björk wrote for Bedtime Story lead you in the direction of going more with the flow ?"

A day or two later, I receive this e-mail from Liz Rosenberg : "I wish I could get an answer from Madonna for you. She’s deep into rehearsals for her tour, and I can’t get any info from her for awhile. I can tell you that Madonna certainly thinks Björk is inspiring and a brilliant artist. Madonna is a huge fan of her music. I’ve never thought Madonna was a ’go with the flow’ person before or after recording Bedtime Story. She goes with a flow - but it’s a flow of her own creation, if you know what I mean.")

I was supposed to get her personal number and call her up, but it just didn’t feel right. I’d love to meet her accidentally, really drunk in a bar. It’s just all that formality that confuses me.

She needs more subconscious," Björk says of Madonna, whom she truly admires. She’s all on the outside. So I wanted her to say, Let’s be impulsive for a change, instead of so clever.

When I was offered to write a song for her, I couldn’t really picture me doing a song that would suit her. But on second thought, I decided to do this to write the things I’ve always wanted to hear her say that she’s never said.

There have been several occasions when it has been self-evident for us
to meet, but my instinct always told me the situation would get
bothersome and faked. She seems to be all brains and no instinct, even
if it obviously can’t be so, since she has gotten herself to where she
is now.

You can also tell by her way of always surviving, that she must have a
hell of a lot of instinct. But in the daily life it seems as if she
isn’t aware of her subconscious, as silly as it may sound.

I have tried to avoid her, as much as I could. I like her, but she seems
to be a woman obsessed with material things. The universe she surrounds
herself with, I can’t take it.

I would much rather just bump into her in a bar by an accident not even
knowing who she is.

Everyone loves Maria Callas, because she doesn’t get locked up in a technique box. She keeps her rrrr [gesturing toward her chest] The unity of emotion and word and tone. Especially, the purity of expression. Every genre has these mechanical clichés that get implanted in the voices and start to hide the power of words.“ She sang a bit of rock ‘n roll around the words “I don’t know nothing“ and made a bit of bel canto from the words “I know everything.“

I’d been watching him since 1990, when he was doing LFO, because I like the pioneers who have stayed faithful to techno. He did several remixes for me—for example, he did the first remix of "Telegram." He played with my voice, adding effects. That’s another thing I’d never done, which I’d love to try more. That’s one reason why Mark and I work so much together ; I trust and respect what he does for me. If I were to say who influenced me most, I would say people like Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, and Mark Bell, because the work Mark did when he was nineteen proved to our generation that pop music is what we understand.

In 1990, when the LFO album came out, I was very excited - this is when I would meet up with Mark Bell & Graham Massey in Manchester. After this, me and Mark would stay in touch and have occasional nerd phone calls where we would play each other impossible stuff to find - labels, over the phone and have a freeform about how to fuck up the human voice and use certain effect units and that sort of stuff.

Mark did some remixes for me on the Post album and later in 1996, I asked Mark to come to Spain to experiment with me for the beginning of Homogenic. He said he would come for a couple of weeks but stayed for six months, and we’ve since worked together for four years. We completed each other’s ideas like this for years.

I guess what is kinda exciting about Homogenic and Mark Bell for me, is when we did the tour, Mark did the tour with me along with the Icelandic String Quartet, so it was the first time since the Sugarcubes that the same people that played on the album played live with me. I felt very good about that. It wasn’t like a collection of session musicians - it was people that I had actually written the stuff with. Mark had obviously written some of the stuff he was doing, so it could change through the tour and he could make it even more his. From that you have this feeling when you go on stage that anything could happen - the plant is still growing it isn’t complete. So that was gorgeous.

Me and Mark have a gorgeous music relationship which comes from a lot of trust . I am very grateful to him on albums like Homogenic , Selmasongs , Medúlla he has had little ego enough to come into songs of mine that are almost complete , I have even programmed some of the rhythms , he has then come into it and added just the rhythm that was needed to complete the track . That is a very generous thing to do and not a lot of electronic artists are that flexible . They wanna storm into your song and change it all and make it into their own environment . Sometimes also he will let me listen to tons of beats of his and i will pick one take it home and edit to a track of mine ( like for example “Wanderlust“ ) But there are also songs me and mark have done where he brought the music and i then sang on top , i think they are 3 : “I go humble“ , “Nature is ancient“ and now “Declare Independence“ . It is way much rarer that we work that way .

I think I had already written about 80% of Vespertine and had done the beats and the skeleton with programmers. Because it was the first time I did microbeats, I felt that some of them were a little bit wooden and that I needed somebody who was a bit of a virtuoso in the field. So, I had been in touch with Matmos, they had already done remixes for me and we had met and had gotten drunk together, so I called them up and I asked them (as I had almost finished Vespertine) if they would be up for doing a tour with me as I was starting to worry about how we were gonna play these beats that were made out of teaspoons hitting a box, not proper instruments, how were we going to play that live ? Because I did a lot of the beats myself I wasn’t going to be able to do them whilst I was busy singing. Also, I love seeing people live who aren’t doing what people have told them to do, it’s their world. So I called them up in November 2000 and asked them to do the tour with me. I asked them to do 27 tracks for me, which would be not only Vespertine but other stuff from other albums and make new beats for all of them. I didn’t want them to use proper instruments for this, but a different angle. They thought about this for a bit and then they came back and said "Yes !" to my surprise, and I was thrilled.

Then I was doing the album, and I knew that we were missing some stuff from several songs so I said ’Would it be okay to send you some songs, I know it’s very late in the process as we are going to mix it in two months, so would it be alright to ask you if you could add some stuff to the songs’ ? and they said ’Yes, why not’. So, I sent the tracks to San Francisco, which is where Matmos added some more beats to it. I guess the role in Vespertine is like when you get session musicians and you get a percussionist and the drummer had already laid down the beats but you need the sparkle to bring it to life, which can completely change the track but its necessary as decoration.

We then did a tour together for a year, which was great fun and Matmos then took the tracks a lot further. Even though the tracks still aren’t a Matmos sound, they have progressed over the tour, which is very exciting. It seems that now we have got to know each other well enough to just jump into a studio and start from scratch. Now they are more like equals.

Björk : I’m attracted to truthful people.

Juergen Teller : Right. You’ve been spending some time with the artist Matthew Barney. Do you understand his work ?

Björk : Yeah. The first time I saw it, I thought Matthew’s work was the closest I’d ever come to seeing my dreams. It’s incredibly similar to the inside of myself, the things that I can’t put into words, maybe a side of me that’s hidden. And you can’t really talk about those things with people if they have a different interior from yours. You know ?

Juergen Teller : That’s a really interesting answer.

Björk : To me, Matthew’s work feels very natural, organic, and healthy. I guess he proved to me that you can go to the most decadent, deepest places, far-far-far into the subconscious, without being destructive. That’s important to me, especially after the film.

Another composer, dead now. He was obsessed with bird noises. His wife was an opera singer and he would go to Indonesia and write down what the birds were singing [pretends to sing like a bird which sounds like a squeaky door] and then he’d come home and while his wife was cooking he’d ask her to sing it and she’d go ’OK, dear !’ [squeaky door-noise ensues) These pieces are fucking the most beautiful gorgeous thing ever. Complete mystique - listen and you’re entranced.

I love Michael Jackson so much. He’s got a ridiculous, outrageous, stubborn faith that magic still is with us.

I did six videos with Michel Gondry, which is a lot. Michel is really possessive, he hates me working with other directors. He calls me and threatens me. When he goes really neurotic and starts to worry, he is almost like Woody Allen. You have to say, ’it’s ok, you don’t have cancer’. He’s really sweet.

Michel did a great work there [in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"]. He gave Kate [Winslet] who’s obviously such a huge spirit, such a vivacious lady, so much space. Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy. But she could be at her full volume without restrictions.

In the past few years you’ve been getting alot of recognition for your videos as well as your music. Do you get very involved with the making of your videos ?

Yes. Especially the relationship with Michel Gondry, that is a very very 50/50 kind of thing. We are now just about to do our fourth video together and we both live in London now, so we basically meet, have a chat, and it’s amazing we finish each other’s sentences and seem to know exactly what each other thinks. I must say, though, that it was an honor to meet Spike Jonze and I think of all the people I met last year (and I met thousands) he’s probably the biggest talent and the most genuine character. The best thing about him, though, is the feeling you get that he’s just started. That he’s gonna be doing what he’s doing for another 50 years. The best is yet to come.

Milton is magic, pure energy.

About ’Slide’ (Under Construction)

Some sort of modern blues. And really dirty too with them rave noises.

Don’t you ever look at a picture of Morrissey and think, Phwoar !

Morrissey ? You’re joking !

The energy here in the nature is incredible. I think you can hear it in a lot of the bands that are in Iceland.

A friend of mine suggested we work together and I was a bit suspicious to begin with.I had to ask what he had done. I like Soul II Soul, but mainly when they’re on the radio. Myself, I like to go out and dance to hardcore or industrial techno, hard beats with an experimental edge. I thought Nellee was too ’good taste’ for my liking. But then I met him, got to know him, got to hear about his fabulous ideas and it ended up with him producing the whole album.

We met accidentally, through friends. But he turned out to be this really exciting, open-minded guy who was on exactly the same trip as I was : Fuck styles, fuck categories - take risks, try anything. We basically just didn’t want to make an album that had been made before, It was just by chance that he was the producer and I was the singer/songwriter, or whatever you’d call it. It was more about our musical relationship, which was a very, very magical one. I guess it was a bit of a musical love affair between Nellee and me.

He’s a genius. He’s also a stylist who likes things to look immaculate. When you go to Nellee’s house he knows where to get the best brandy in Europe and he’s got the best cheese. He’ll have a record that could only be bought from some record store in Texas in 1953. Everything is the best. And so, in a way, when he is working with you you feel quite special. When I was working with Nellee I would write five times better lyrics and five times better melodies and five times better everything - because he was so hard to please, you see.

The musical relationship between me and Nellee was intense. It was close to marriage. My musical collaborations sometimes seem to be more intense than my love things, because it’s so deep in me. If I write a tune and somebody completes it, it’s almost more important to me than the romantic idea of who is the other half of my child or something.

It came to an end because he and I stopped surprising each other. It was quite magical when we met, and it exploded with the same intensity, but we’re really good friends now. I like to think that I can survive on my own. I’ve got a stupid amount of that in me. But you can’t live without someone.

I had never
intended to get a producer, I didn’t even like the word producer - I
thought that things would just be done by themselves, you know. But
Nellee Hooper seemed to be very sensually into my ideas and it seemed he
would arrange my songs with me from the point of view of my lyrics, not
from some musical history vibe. I didn’t really like Soul II Soul, they
were too tasteful for my liking. So I didn’t let him loose on the album,
I would criticise every footstep he took but he seemed to have a very
open mind like myself. I wasn’t worried about where I came from and he
wasn’t worried where he came from at all ; we both wanted to start at
point zero.

For me, Nellee Hooper is very much about me coming to London and he would be very sociable. He is like this big daddy - a host character who would introduce me to tons of people. He has a real talent to see what’s inside a person and he would set up things to surprise me. For example, when we were working on this island, in the evening, he would blindfold me and put me in the car and take me to this beach and he would have set up a little DAT recording system with a microphone with a very, very long lead and I would have some headphones, so I would record vocals whilst running along in the sand. So he would be very fearless in sussing out what was inside of me and dying to get out. He would set up these situations where I had to do things that were quite scary, but I had to do it. I wrote this one song called Cover Me, which was about entering the unknown. Nellee would do this same thing, blindfold me and take me off in the car and put me into this cave, which was underground and full of bats. It was completely black inside so that I couldn’t even see the ground - sometimes it was just like canyons and stuff, and I would do the vocal whilst I was walking inside the cave and I would be just about to fall over - you can even hear the sounds of bats. So, it was with stuff like this that Nellee pushed me into areas that he knew I wanted to go into, but I didn’t have the guts or the confidence to go there. He would create a nest for me, a cradle, with a lot of confidence to work in. It was with him, for example, that I learnt to work with a programmer. He had his own studio with his own programmer, and I would come and do stuff with them and everything was taken care of. So I learnt a lot of stuff from him, like how to behave in a London studio, how to communicate with the engineer and how to communicate with the programmer. Again, very paternal, although very different to Graham Massey. As Graham Massey had very similar musical tastes to me, but Nellee had completely different tastes. So Graham Massey was very supportive of me in a purely musical sense, where Nellee Hooper was very supportive in helping me to deal with the world, the studio, my sense and longing for adventure - so more how to act and operate as a musician, rather than musical direction, which Graham has probably been more helpful with.

Nellee was very paternal, very protective, helping with self-confidence issues. Nellee really encouraged me to be as Icelandic as I am. On Debut, we ended up having an indian orchestra, bits of saxophone and this Icelandic person singing. And it made sense with the environment I was in. It wasn’t exotic for exotic’s sake, it was the truth.

He is amazing !! He is extemely versatile and quick . Very professional . He played piano on a version of Oceania that actually wasn’t on Medúlla but a b-side , and funnily enough the stuff we recorded for DR9 didn’t end up on the cd , i re-recorded it with brass in iceland . On Volta he helped me conduct a song called "Pneumonia" . I did the arrangement but while he was conducting he did some snappy alterations that worked better .

Dealing with classical musicians, I take it as far as I can, and then I bring Nico to the rescue. He’s a young composer, very clever and snappy. The first time we worked together I’d done a version of Oceania, the song for the Olympics, and it was almost slapstick, like two grand pianos having a fight. I had a fantasy of Richard Clayderman and Liberace on stage, playing like Tom and Jerry. I wrote this impossible-to-play thing and Nico had the ability to play it.

About ’Dove Song’ (Now Is Early)

An all-time favourite. Such a relentless rhythm. And her playful, gorgeous vocals !

Every image is so alive. He takes photos of pretty dark stuff, and yet there’s outrageous vitality in them. They’re not destructive. His work makes me think about enjoying life, screaming from a mountaintop because the world is wonderful.

About ’La Nativite Du Seigneur’ (Virgil Fox In Concert)

With an organ that is like nature, structural but like a constellation of stars. Mysterious and euphoric, which is an unusual combination.

I don’t think there’s been any one person who’s inspired me in. Maybe Olivier Messiaen, the composer, because I’ve loved him all my life – at music school, doing music theory, I first heard him when I was 10 or 11.

About ’Moussolou’ (Moussolou)

Optimistic ! And they take on things with that rhythm ! Yet so effortless... She is an amazing singer. I adore how internal her letting go is.

She’s the best.

One and a half year ago I was asked to perform at the Brit awards and they asked me to do a duet with Meatloaf. And I was like ’Yeah, thank you. But sometimes you have two things you like, like chocolate and onions, but maybe you shouldn’t cook the same dish out of it.’

They said ’OK OK OK OK’ and then they suggested David Bowie, and I was again like ’I’m very honoured, he’s a genius and everything, but I’m not sure we have a lot to give to each other today. Maybe it’s not the right timing or something.’ — ’OK OK OK’.

And then I’m like ’Can I make a suggestion ?’ — ’Okay’ — ’Can I ask Polly ?’ — ’Yeah, Yeah’. And I asked Polly and she said yes too, and I was so happy.

We meet sometimes and giggle about how obvious it is that we are gonna do this until we’re 80. But I’m not sure if we’ll work together, we’ll just have to see that. But what is more important is that I think we can support each other. And obviously we understand quite easily without any words each other’s jobs.

In 1994, you were on the cover of Q magazine alongside PJ Harvey and Tori Amos in an article titled, "Hips. Tits. Lips. Power." You’re all releasing albums this year. If you were to gather again thirteen years on, what would the dynamic be like between the three of you ?

Not that different. Probably very similar, actually. We’ve never been very good friends — obviously it was set up by the magazine — but it doesn’t surprise me that thirteen years later, we’re still up to it [laughs].

This might sound really arrogant, I don’t know, but when it comes to people who make music, I’m not very interested in most cases. That doesn’t mean I think they’re bad, they just don’t do anything for me. But I could tell very quickly when I heard Polly’s album and Tori’s album that I’d like them. When I met Polly, it was really relaxed and I have to say that she was like I expected her to be.

I didn’t get that "mad bitch" impression from listening to Polly’s records. I thought she sounded like a caring person. I didn’t expect her to turn up with a chainsaw.

What do you think of Prince’s decision to distribute his latest album for free in a British newspaper ?

Good for him ! He seems to have found his ground. Independence like that is precious. It sort of seems to be going down that road anyway. Touring is where people are up for buying a ticket with no regret. The Web gives access to so many things (including free downloads, YouTube and so on) the only thing it can’t give you is "live" experience. So that has become double precious.

Around 1987, when The Sugarcubes started, I got heavily into hip hop. I was listening to Public Enemy every day, which meant a bit of a fight on the tour bus as I was trying to play it all the time and the others hated it. After Public Enemy, everything else is just like... woofty. I mean, wimpish. Yo Bum Rush The Show was the one that opened your mind but Fear Of A Black Planet is the one that, musically, is a masterpiece. They’ve been so misunderstood. They’ve mostly been taken for their politics, which is great, but if you just look at the other worlds, and there are a lot of worlds in this world, one being music, which is the leader of them all because it’s pure instinct - well, musically, they just did it. No- one in hip hop, house, techno, whatever, opened up as much ground as they did. The music is so modern and so... abstract. It’s just like, fuck the rules. I would put them in a group with people like Stockhausen and Schoenberg. Forget about rock’n’roll chords, we’ve all been suffering from them all our lives, and they just rescued us from that syndrome.

I saw Radiohead for the first time last year, I’d never been in the right country before. They were spectacular. But I keep wanting (starts laughing) to throw the guitars away ! There are always these dank guitarists doing the last, "No, one more solo, please !" It’s morbid necrophilia to me. I still think they’re the best band in the world. And they’re the last people I should be criticising, at least they’re trying. But for me, it’s mostly Thom. I don’t know anybody like him, maybe Joni Mitchell, when there’s this depth. It’s like forever. Maybe he needs those guitars to struggle against. To keep those corpses alive !

Roland Kirk and Sun Ra are what I’ve been most into in the last five years. Both aren’t academic jazz people, they’re totally earthy and natural, like ancient, somehow, but very modern at the same time. The sound is muddy. If I had to pick one person as my hero, I’d have to say Kirk : He plays brass, for one, which has always been a soft spot for me, and he plays in a very intuitive way as opposed to with brains. He plays songs that are like pop songs, they’re so simple, but at the same time, are mind- expanding experiences. It’s not too much of any- thing but has got all the extremes. He plays freejazz that a five-year-old kid would understand, that anyone could get into, which is something I always like.

Pick five Roland Kirk and five Sun Ra albums and you’ll probably have my favourite record. But if you’re forcing me to pick one, it’s Kirk’s The Inflated Tear. It’s at the brilliant stage in his life, before he got too much into fusion, which I don’t like, when he was getting really basic, back to roots. The title track is about when he was two years old, and had some eye disease, and was living in this black ghetto. He had this white nurse who didn’t really have time to take good care of him, and gave him the wrong medicine for his eyes, which blinded him for life. The song is based on memory : he could remember the last minute he saw and the first minute he couldn’t.

The beats on ‘Who Is It’ sound so deep you could mistake them for Aphex Twin or Autechre.

I know, his noises sound so electronic Warp should commission him to do a covers album. Amazingly, ‘Who Is It’ was the first track we recorded together. He just walked into the studio, picked up the mic and did it in one take.

"F—ing hell,“ says Björk of his startling performance on “Who Is It.“ “There’s no overdubbing. He did it live in one take. That’s Rahzel for you. I think somebody like him deserves a solo. I’ve heard him on records where they’ll just take one bar of him, loop it, and it sounds like drums. Why get him to do that ? It’s a waste.“

I love them so much, I wish I could marry them or something.

C’est lui qui est entré en contact avec moi. C’était il y a un an et demi. À l’époque, je n’avais rien écouté de son travail avec FKA Twigs ou Kanye West. Mais je l’ai tout de suite beaucoup apprécié en le découvrant. (…) Nous avons beaucoup de points en commun, que ce soit musicalement ou émotionnellement. Je me suis rendu compte qu’il connaissait très bien mon travail – et même mieux que moi, probablement.

me and richard have talked sometimes about working together , since 95 , but it has never happened , i guess he has suggested couple of times we do something and i couple of times but sometimes it is not about literally doing stuff , it is more a mutual support that is more important . i personally don’t think richard’s music needs vocals , it seems perfect as it is .

he came to my show in tokyo last night and it was great to see him . he told me earlier that in that german article he was misquoted .

i personlly think it is obviously a misquote because he knows how i work , we have several mutual friends i have worked with and it is everything but a "business affair" . most of the people i work with become family , matmos and me moved to manhattan and spent 8 months together before the tour just to prepare the beats for it . i find it very hard to work with people i don’t know well , if you look on the credit list of my album it is the same people over and over again .

i probably shouldn’t defend myself here but i was a little hurt because this was so untrue . but sometimes journalist on purpose frase questions and then edit the answers in a way that they want conflict between musicmakers . probably negative drama stuff will sell their papers better . which is a shame .

anyway

i’ll breath deeply and stop moaning .

thanks for listening ...

What was it like working with the legendary Robert Wyatt on ‘Submarine’ and ‘Oceania’ ?

Incredible. We set up a little system in his home studio, recorded a couple of tracks, then stayed up all night talking and drinking red wine. He played me some amazing bebop Sun Ra recorded in the early 60s and I deejayed some DAF and Brian Eno tracks from my laptop. It was a wonderful experience and I feel very lucky to have met him and his wife Alfie. They’re both really talented people that have created their own little universe away from the world.

He’s got an incredible range ­ like seven octaves or something
crazy ! Robert was probably the most spontaneous one. After I finished
the record [Medúlla] I felt that someone or something was missing, and maybe it
was the more improvisational thing that the voice does to be soulful.
So I thought he would be excellent at it. I literally called him up,
and he said yes. He got a CD the next day, and I drove to his home,
which is three hours north of London. We set up a laptop and a
microphone in his bedroom, and he sang all day. Basically, he would
replace my vocals and obviously add a little bit of his own, too. Then
we got drunk in the evening. The next day we were going to continue,
but we decided it wasn’t necessary, and I just went home.

That’s so great ! It must have been so satisfying to do something so quickly, because some of these songs sound like bigger productions, with all the choirs. Was that fun to do ?

Yeah, you’re spot-on. It was so fun to do. You just want something instantaneous, you know ? So you enjoy it so much. And going to Robert’s house—he’s got such a charming little house with his gorgeous wife. They told us tons of stories. It was just so much like going into somebody else’s universe. It was just delicious.

They’re a Finnish techno band - it’s comical concept techno. They’ve got one song which has one bleep which goes at 110 bpm and another bleep which goes at one beat per minute faster so it takes two minutes to meet and another two minutes to slowly go away from each other. That’s amazing, isn’t it ? When I go out in New York I usually seek out new funky techno ; here I go out to get completely plastered. Ninety-nine per cent of techno is shit so I’m really picky but techno’s probably my biggest thing.

“I got obsessed with her band Samaris a few years ago,” says Björk, “and then it was amazing to see her do her own stuff. She’s surrounded herself with a really authentic community of friends. There are probably about 150 musicians in Reykjavik, and groups there sort of become the opposite of each other, like, ‘Oh, that singer’s dressed like that, I better dress the opposite.’ Such is the tight-knit scene in Iceland, she continues, that “you naturally develop individuality. Also, you’ll be in a classical band and an electronic band and a metal band, and that’s okay. Everything blurs into each other, which I’m sure you can hear in Icelandic music.”
Björk, The Guardian

There’s a band that a lot of people know about called Sigur Rós. They’ve got so much integrity and
are so true to themselves. They are very Icelandic, whatever that means, but still are not painting
themselves into a corner. They are still communicating above and beyond a level that people all over can relate to. That makes me very, very happy.

Have you already worked with Sigur Rós ? What do you think of him ?

We’ve been seeing eachother off and on in Bars in Reykjavík for quite a while now, maybe we’ll record a song together this summer, we’ll have to see.

Juergen Teller : So how is your son ?

Björk : Oh, he’s great.

Juergen Teller : Do you often make music together ?

Björk : No, the area where we meet seems to be humor. We’ve always worn costumes, enjoyed comedy videos, and read scripts-he’s really into analyzing scripts.

Juergen Teller : What kind ?

Björk : Well, he went through a period where he learned by heart all the scripts for everything John Cleese did, like Fawlty Towers and Monty Python. And he’s definitely into science fiction. We must have watched Alien together five thousand times. Of course, I’ll be admiring Sigourney Weaver-kind of female power-and he’ll be admiring the aliens. [laughs]

Juergen Teller : Right, right. Do you find it difficult to move around so much, having a kid ?

Björk : Well, Sindri started traveling with me when he was one year old. I guess guess I was very young and very stupid, and nobody told me that it was difficult, and so it wasn’t. Also, I come from a family where there were always lots of kids around, and everybody could do what they wanted. There wasn’t a separate, children’s world. As an adult, I felt I could still do my job, be pretty hardcore...

Juergen Teller : ...and have your son with you.

Björk : Yeah. And when I was in the Sugarcubes, I wasn’t the only one with a kid. There were always a lot of Icelandic people traveling with us, sort of like a family. When I think about it now, I can’t believe it. I had one suitcase with winter clothes, one with summer clothes, and another full of toys. But it was quite magical to discover the world with a child.

Juergen Teller : Yeah, I feel the same about my daughter, Lola. I want to always be around for her, sort of be her mate.

Björk : I always saw traveling with Sindri as a luxury. We kind of had a schedule - he’d wake up at about 7:00 a.m., and just gently shake me. And while other people in the band were maybe partying quite hard, fair enough, and waking up in the tour bus around noon, he and I would be off to three amusement parks and four gardens, and we’d be drawing maps and making up games. For a while we toured with a bicycle that had a little kid’s seat attached. We’d just throw it in with all the equipment. Outside of the bus we’d ride around, and he’d wear his little helmet. We wouldn’t know where we were, so we’d just have to find out way together.

Juergen Teller : Actually, that sounds quite exciting.

Björk : And then after the concerts, I would climb all sweaty into bed with him. So I always felt like I was the lucky one, to have a partner who would do it all with me. I guess we’re like brother and sister in a lot of ways.

Kids are so excellent. He has been the bravest of all during our move here and he’s right into it. He already knows Icelandic but I want him to speak English, which is already better than mine ! But I don’t know what school to send him to as all schools make statements which is the fault of the class system. Do I want him to be a snob or working class or a Chelsea kind of kid ? But it’s not my fight in the end.

I think what happens when you have a child that young is, I think it’s quite common, is that the child becomes more of a pal, like a person rather than a child. Obviously you still take care of them and feed them and dress them and everything, but it’s more like a companion. That’s kind of what’s happened and I was really lucky. He travelled with me until he started school. A lot of my friends put their child into care eight hours a day, when it was three or six months old, and that’s a lot of time to be away from a child. Whereas I was in this working situation with the Sugarcubes where I could take him with me to a rehearsal and if he was crying we would just stop the rehearsal.

I don’t think that would have been very likely if I worked in Tesco’s.

I don’t look at myself as a martyr at all, it’s rather the other way, it’s given me a lot. Anyway, I think children are such pure creatures and they’re so correct about give and take. With grown-ups you give them 900 and you get 1.3 back, people are a bit warped sometimes when they grow up. But with children you give them this much and you get ten times more back. Sindri’s never ever been a burden to me. If anything he’s made things easier for me.

He has to be recognised for what he is. I think it’s terrible if he’s recognised for what I am. That’s not fair on him and he will be unhappy if he starts depending on that. I want him to be himself and be recognised for what he does. It’s tricky like this Bangkok thing where I attacked this lady, I completely lost my temper. I’m not proud of it, I’ll be ashamed of it for the rest of my life, but I was protecting him from my demons, from the silly things that have to do with my job.

How would you feel if your son was gay ?

That was actually the first thing his father said when he saw him. Thor said, "It’s a boy and he’s gay." That’s just his sense of humor. I laughed my head off and the doctors couldn’t believe how insensitive he was. But that was exactly what I needed, just to have a laugh after all of that hard work. In a sense it would be quite handy because I wouldn’t mind, instead of having a gay person being born into a family where they would make it into a nightmare for him. But you can’t think that way - my son just has to be my son, doesn’t he ? I wouldn’t mind at all, though. When we talk about boyfriends or girlfriends, we always talk about both possibilities.

For you ?

For him. Or for whomever. ’Cause I’ve got a lot of gay friends and lesbian friends and they bring their lovers around and it’s not taken for granted that it’s the other sex. That’s something that I think is sort of wonderful about this generation - I feel like my kids will grow up thinking that being gay is just normal, as opposed to being a tragedy.

He’s writing science fiction stories. On his lap-top. He’s really into Star Wars and we’ve got a new craze : Aliens ! I never seen them till last week ! Sigourney Weaver ; what a woman ! Sindri has to go a bit under the sheets sometimes. His senses are words - I don’t know if he’ll be a teacher or a writer or something to do with language. But I don’t mind what he does.

I’ve been very lucky, he toured with me all the way up till he was six, then I could do the tours when he was on half-terms or holidays. But we’re so connected that when we’re not together we tend to just get on with our lives. It seems cold but we’re together ; mostly, 24 hours

He does his homework, and I don’t get involved and I do my homework and he doesn’t get involved. We don’t discuss my work. I have calmed down a bit which is maybe because I am bringing up a child. I don’t swear in my songs anymore. I keep telling Sindri to use "fuck" sparely, because if he says fuck every other word, it won’t do him any good when he is having a proper argument because he has run out of fucks.

I do not talk about my son because it’s not fair. I do not want him being bothered.

He is the underestimated hero of Iceland music. He is very humble, thinking only of himself and working all the time for Icelandic music. He used to have many sleepless nights cleaning floors of restaurants to pay for the record store, for records, and so on. I owe so much to him, to his hyperventilating enthusiasm for every kind of music—rock, punk, electronic, classical. He has no limitations to his vision.

Very fresh sounding. Fun. They just did a remix for me. I felt very honoured. And they played with us at the Harlem Apollo.

I must say that it was an honor to meet Spike Jonze and I think of all the people I met last year (and I met thousands) he’s probably the biggest talent and the most genuine character. The best thing about him, though, is the feeling you get that he’s just started. That he’s gonna be doing what he’s doing for another 50 years. The best is yet to come.

He makes a connection with people he’s filmed or photographed. And people on the other side of that connection can feel fueled with confidence. You feel very strong. But you are yourself, you don’t need him. And I think I haven’t met many people like that.

I heard you’re going out with Stephane [Sednaoui, celebrity photographer].

I was.

Oh. What happened ? .

It’s a secret.

Was it just a logistical problem, with him living in America ? .

No, I can deal with things like that quite easily, Both of us can. Travelling, all that, being close to someone in another country, No, it just wasn’t right, that’s all.

Lately, I have been inspired by the music of Sun Ra, mainly because of its absractness. I’m not trying to sound deep, I just find it timeless. Sun Ra is one of the few people of his generation who remained true to the spirit and attitude of jazz music. To me that means saying ’Fuck the rules !’ You start at ground zero and you remain totally open-minded about what you create. Music is about expressing an emotion, not restating a series of stale phrases.

Some of Sun Ra’s best tunes are very simple, so simple a child could understand them and a person from another culture could get it. The best music is simple and direct. Music doesn’t need complexity to hide dishonesty, it should stare you straight in the face and speak to you. Music shouldn’t be made for an elite crowd who have learned how to appreciate it. It should have the ability to affect anyone, anywhere.

I met this girl who lives really far north in Canada in a town with only 200 people and she invented her own style of throat singing. It’s supposed to be totally with no emotion, but she’s like Edith Piaf or something, totally emotional, so I got her to do beats to quite a few songs. That was fun.

Now, I really respect the Sixties pop culture of the Beatles, where you get one idea and you repeat it nine hundred times. I respect that repetition : "Love, love me do." But that’s not where I come from.

A lot of people confuse the words modern and cold and think that modern music is supposed to be cold with no emotion. I think this is rubbish, because emotions will always be our main drive. What I like about the Brodsky Quartet is that they can play some of the bery stark chamber music written in the last 20 years, but remain completely full of passion.

flying from iceland on a sunday, slightly melancholic like i sometimes am on planes but also full of anticipation for the destination. read the cultural pages in the paper. see photos of the girls i have gradually been getting to know over the past months/years. the icelandic love corporations making art from liquorice. warms the heart. tear out one photo when the flight-attendant doesn’t see and slip it between the pages of my journal.

a photo of a mask.

find it incredible that while some kind of icelandic-woman-voodoo-music has been seething inside of me they have crocheted from cute grannydoilycrochet in neon colours this wild woman voodoo mask. and i can’t believe how similar our thoughts are. but i keep my council and decide to wait until i have worked more on the album, to see if we really are on the same wave-length. however, i do glue it on to the front page of my journal and between me and myself the mask transforms into the protector face of the project. a few months later we are all in the irish pub in hverfisgata and i find the courage to mention this to jóní. she is game.

we then meet up in their studio (also in hverfisgata, the street obviously has had a very creative effect on the collaboration) and discuss our first assignment : to make a new character, an electro neon icelandic domestic joyous force of nature.

and it has gone so supernaturally well !!!

and been so much fun

because they are so good at creating creatures that do not exist

and i wanted so much to be something that I have never been

björk gudmundsdóttir

I think people like the Spice Girls are sacrificing their lives for the entertainment of the planet.

If you’re playing by the rules, there’s more self-sacrifice than Mother Teresa, but people are so ungrateful of this. I’ve had a lot of offers to do that sort of thing, but you wouldn’t believe the amount of work involved. I’m doing the things I enjoy doing. Being a selfish bitch.

Yago : When you recorded "I’ve Seen It All" for Selmasongs with Thom Yorke in the studio, was there an instant click ? What was it like, being in the studio with him ?

Björk : We’ve known about each other for a while. [We were] always just about to do something together, and we were just waiting for the right situation. I was really excited about this song ; I thought that I finally had a song that deserved his voice, ’cause he’s definitely my favorite male singer in the world. I asked him, and he being the kind of guy he is, full of integrity — there’s not a grain of artificial, show-business behavior in him — he kind of insisted that he would turn up [in the studio] and be there for quite a while, so the communication in the song, the recording, was real and genuine. It wasn’t just a turn-it-on, you know, "I recorded my bit in Las Vegas and he recorded his..." you know, [like] we never met or something. It was the opposite, and that actually came from him, ’cause I was all just kind of being in work mode, "Yeah, we have to get it done," and he was all, "No, no, no."

I guess that comes from him being in a band. At that stage, he just finished [Radiohead’s Kid A], so he’d done three years of being in a room with five people, and it’s all about communication. You can be playing a song, but if you’re absentminded, it’s not good. It’s all about the actual effort you make to bond with someone.

So yeah, we sung for, like, four days, a few hours a day — maybe I’m exaggerating ; I’m not sure, truthfully — until we came to that place. Because I think the way I sang that song was pretty [Björk makes explosion sound], and for him, it’s a very different approach. He made me sing it differently. It’s kind of more sensitive and more in touch, you know. I was very flattered by his effort.

You’re singing a duet with Thom Yorke from Radiohead in "I’ve seen it all" on the new album. Is he an intense personality as well ?

Yes, but in a very different way. I respect him very much. He’s very shy and uncertain and doesn’t reveal too much of himself. That’s why it’s quite hard for me to explain what he’s like. I can’t do him justice. But he’s a very special person.

When he enters a room he affects the whole atmosphere in a very positive way. I also admire his great loyalty towards his band. He sees himself as a member and writer of Radiohead. His work is based on communication and understanding. He’s very down-to-earth and not egocentric at all.

We worked together for three or four days, which I’m very grateful about. We worked together with songs, which I had worked on during three years not knowing what to do with them. Thanks to him these songs saw a new light of day and that was a wonderful experience.

I sang a duet with Thom Yorke of Radiohead.
It’s on the soundtrack album for the film.
It was a gorgeous experience... we spent four days in Spain,
singing a few hours a day. It’s been a dream of mine for a long
time to blend my voice with his.

That was lovely !

I guess working with him, he was the odd one out of the album for several reasons. The things I did with him were worked very differently than the rest of the songs. It was very good working with him.

I guess working with him, he was the odd one out of the album for several reasons. The things I did with him were worked very differently than the rest of the songs. It was very good working with him.

This is what Icelandic kids get for a birthday present when they’re young. Egner is this ideologist guy who made plays for children, on the same tip as Winnie The Pooh, I’d say : the Taoist tip, if you want. The songs are full of anarchy, like ’fuck parents, fuck teachers, fuck policeman, I can bring myself up’. One song is about the animals who live in the forest who decide not to eat each other, and become vegetarians. It’s a bit of a heavy moral message for five-year-olds.

Basically, it’s all about these two Icelandic trolls, Karius and Baktus, who were the first punks, so I was introduced to punks about 10 years earlier than you lot. Anyway, they live in your teeth, and if you eat sweets, they’re really hardcore punks, so they like to puke and spit like punks like to, and then they really hit your teeth, and shout. There are brilliant sound effects on this (impersonates tooth decay). It’s a bit like Igor Stravinsky for kids, with brass and string instruments. There are happy songs and sad songs, but it’s all very dramatic. It definitely made you think that authority was a bit dodgy. I think it’s a bit of the Bohemian Scandinavian over-socially aware thing, the idea that kids can sue their parents, which has gone out of date now. I must admit, I thought twice before I played it to my son. Fairy tales are cruel, aren’t they ? The wolf was eating the grandmother, after all.

I think he is a genius . His beats have so much of his character and have so much humour in it , not gangsta kinda prangsta ! My favorite timbaland stuff is probably “Slide“ and “Sin’t that funny “ with Missy .

i share with tyondai a sort of instrumental view on the voice. we’re sort of singers that don’t sing. it has been fun sharing music tastes with him , finding out that 90% of the music we both listen to is instrumental. so it was with great excitement i waited for : central market

not only doesnt he sing much on it, but when he sings he treats his voice like an instrument not too held back by traditional singer songwriter narratives, word driven storytelling . rather, he throws himself deep into full blown orchestral storytelling that a few people have commented : sounds like film music without the film. and therefore : they dont know exactly what to do with it :

is it film music ? is he a singer ? is it indie ? contemporary classical ? serious slapstick ? post indie orchestral prog after hours tea music ?

and so on

i have to admit one of the greatest pleasures i got out of listening to this music was how uncategorical it was . and also how different the songs are from each other . but i can reassure you it is amazing bicycle music, has all the different epic sections that are ideal for bicycling through different streets and landscapes ... where the modern autumn of 2009 provides the visuals .

tyondai has with great ambition and detail loving hard work created music that is a mashup of 20 century music and has bravely taken an extra step :

into the unknown.

I’ve been listening to Toumani Diabaté for years, especially to "New Ancient Strings",a spooky mix between strings, tribal rhythms, brass, kora...It had already influenced me for Vespertine, where I soiled the sound of the too angelical instruments, like the harp or the glockenspiel...

With the Sugarcubes, we had all kinds of offers to tour the world, when Sindri was very young. And of course I was bringing him with me. There wasn’t a clause that said I could bring him, I just did. I was doing three or four shows a week in the evening when he was asleep anyway. If you put child to kindergarten, you’ve got to be away from them 40 hours a week, in any case, you know ? I didn’t have to do that, and people loved him, so I was lucky. More people should take their babies on tour ! Maybe it’s an Icelandic thing : we’re from a country with lots of kids, so they come along with you. But maybe...saying that, I wish my mum I wish she had done more what she wanted to do when I was a little girl, because she was always running after us. I was the eldest of six – we were everywhere. But, you know, you can do the both, and I have always done the both, and my kids are really good.

With me and Tricky I don’t think we ever knew if we were going out together or not. I mean, we were going out together and then we weren’t. Because, basically, the way our relationship functioned was that we were a support mechanism for each other, and we still have this kind of, like, permission to call each other in the middle of the night, when I’m in fucking Munich and he’s in fucking Tokyo. It’s a very strange job we’ve got, and we don’t have to explain it : we know. And we know the pressure. So that’s more what our relationship is like and still is. And I think it didn’t last a long time before we realised that that is why we’d met and sucked like a magnet to each other.

He’s Mr Chaos, he likes to be Mr Unpredictable and turn his back on the world and play hard to get. I like Tricky - he got that nickname at school and it’s no coincidence. If you want Tricky to go right, you ask him to go left. If you want to do an aggressive song, you suggest doing something tender, and vice versa. But now I think he’s sussed me out !

He’s the most important person around, he’s just so brave. The most important element about Tricky, which I think a lot of people overlook, is his honesty. He’s not scared of being ugly. A lot of people are always beautifying themselves and making themselves more glamorous. But it’s just truth. And you can’t kill that.

I definitely learned from Tricky, but not about beats. With Tricky, it’s the relationship he has with his songs. It’s that abstract, you can’t point it out. It was fascinating to watch him work. Especially with how he focused on a song and the emotions, so it really isn’t just a song anymore. He has this outrageous faith in the focus point of the song, its like meditation. It doesn’t matter if there’s no logic in the lyrics, or in the music. It’s still that faith. I respect him very much for that.

I worked with him for a couple of songs on Post. He’s completely obsessed by anything that’s unpredictable. If you tell him to go left, he’ll go right. If you tell him to go see a dentist, he’ll take it as : whatever you do, DON’T go see a dentist ! I love that.

I’ve been reading a biography of her and she’s kinda cool. She’s a dancer, and I like her because she kind of re-invented dance. I just read the book last week and what she did with dance was really cool.

She’s from America, from Indiana, brought up in California, moved to New York and formed her own dance company and was her own person. She just didn’t take anything for granted and kind of went for it. I’ve only seen her stuff on telly, though.

She’s just a brilliant person. Always questioning everything and obsessed with sincerity and originality. People like her that are dancing are great because she kind of allows herself to not know the answers to everything. She’s kind of looking for things. When you pretend you know it all, it’s downhill from there, really.

Um, I respect them. I used to listen to them a lot in my house when I was a kid, my dad’s got all their records.

He was really amazing to work with. We were dancing for ten hours a day — I’ve enver worked so hard in my life — but it was always fun.

What do you get out of working with other people ? — I’ve talked a lot about it with Arca. We talk a lot about merging—when you merge with another person, when you lose yourself—and how we don’t like that merging is looked upon as a weakness. I think it’s a talent that a lot of women have. They become the other half of someone. Sometimes it’s looked down upon, but it’s a strength. It’s the feeling of losing yourself to something that’s bigger than you. It’s 1+1 is 3. It’s a very feminine quality. A lot of guys have it, maybe especially if you’re gay. I think that should be in the next phase of feminism—or genderism, I don’t know what to call it—that merging with people should be a strength.

You’ve worked with musicians as diverse as Timbaland, Nellee Hooper and Lightning Bolt. As a songwriter, do you feed off of this interaction or do you come to these musicians with a very specific idea of what you want ?

Both really. It really varies. With those three it was three very different ways of working. Never twice the same. You just have to be spontaneous, follow a gut feeling.

No. I think motherhood is far more complex than that. Because if you get close to people, you keep swapping roles. You mother a person, and you mother yourself and you father yourself. You allow yourself to be an idiot and you do the same with your friends. And to say I’m only protective towards my child, and when I meet my mother I’m really stupid, when I meet my boyfriend I’m really sexy, and when I meet my friends I’m really humorous - I think life is a bit more complex than that and you end up being everything at once. And that’s kind of what I like about life - that you can’t analyze it like that. You can’t stand in front of your kid and say, "I’m your mother and you’re my child". It’s just not that simple, because you’ve got a friend for life in your child. And sometimes, the kids, they protect you.

Oh, they’re gorgeous, like big teddy bears. They fall asleep in piles, do you know that ? They’re just like [snores]. Derek fell asleep on the studio floor at six un the morning and before he knew it there were five Wu-Tang members on top of him [lies across my lap and pretends to snore]. They’re just gorgeous people. And so we started off doing one track. It’s just doing my head in. I still think we can do better beats on that one. What he did was brilliant, but it was just not the right timing. I was out or something, and when I got back, he’d got all the strings people in and recorded them.