David Toop est écrivain, journaliste et musicien. Depuis son premier album paru en 1975 sur le label de Brian Eno, il a réalisé plus d’une vingtaine de disques.
En tant que critique et journaliste, il écrit pour de nombreuses revues, parmi lesquelles The Wire, The Face ou The Village Voice.
Collaboration avec Björk
Pour le magazine Wire, il a écrit un article sur Selmasongs en 2000 et il a interviewé Björk pour la sortie de Vespertine. En 2002, il l’a interrogée sur ses multiples collaborations.
Les chants d’oiseaux enregistrés au Venezuela de son l’album "Hekura" (1980) ont été réutilisés par Björk dans Utopia.
À propos de sa rencontre avec Björk
She got in touch with me when Lost Shadows was released and said she was really happy it was out. That it’s referred to as Hekura suggests to me that maybe she has an original copy of it. And if she has, that’s extraordinary. I only pressed 500 and in the ‘70s, that was a very small run.
David Toop, Fact
Réalisé par David Toop en 1978 et réédité en 2015, l’album se compose d’enregistrements de champs rituels Yanomami, de cérémonies chamanistiques et de sons de la forêt amazonienne (disponible sur Spotify et Deezer).
The first time she ever contacted me was when she was working on the Lars Von Trier film [Dancer In The Dark]. I think for her, it was very dispiriting because she’d written this music she wanted people to be talking about and instead they were talking about these ridiculous made-up stories of what was happening between her and Lars Von Trier. So she asked me if I would write something about the music she’d written for that film. I think she just wanted a kind of serious reflection because her role as somebody who composes or works in the studio has always been underestimated.
David Toop, Fact
À propos des oiseaux sur Utopia
What [Björk’s] used are the night time recordings of birds and insects between tracks. When I reissued the record [as 2015’s Lost Shadows : In Defence of the Soul], I included more of that material, partly because I had the space to do so. The original release was pretty much devoted to the Yanomami shamanistic stuff and their songs. But my ideas changed in relation to the material : I felt that these nocturnal recordings of bird and insect sounds were like a kind of framing, a context. Between the sounds of bioacoustic and environmental sounds and the Yanomami’s belief systems and the shamanistic imagery and so on, it is very important to include more. So I’m very happy that she wants to use that.
David Toop, Fact
Liens
– Son blog
– David Toop on how he wrote one of Björk’s favorite albums
