Presse
This is wildly imaginative, creatively liberated pop music. Biophilia seems to have intimidated some critics, because the project is a leap forward for what albums can be – it seems true originality can be discomfiting for some. But the project taken as a whole is almost unfathomably ambitious construct of which music is just one facet, and it reaffirms Björk’s position as one of most creative musical minds of a generation. Grapevine
There was always spectacle enough in Björk’s voice : those operatic leaps in tone ; the air-cutting quality of those impossibly long clean notes. In "Solstice" from Biophilia, she performed alone, with her iPad. "Remember that you are," she sang, "a light-bearer receiving radiance from others." There was, in the way Björk chewed and emitted the words, plenty of illumination to go around. Rolling Stone
This was the first year Iceland Airwaves had use of the newly opened complex called Harpa. It’s a beautiful, multi-room structure near the water, with an edifice of floor-to-ceiling window panes that curved into one other like a towering glass honeycomb. This is where Björk performed on our first night. This is also where we basically lost our shit on the first night. Seeing Björk in Iceland meant not understanding the few lines of banter she proffered, which is to say seeing Björk in Icleand is basically like seeing Björk any where in the world : stunning, sensorily overloading, intimate and moving even if you don’t always comprehend what’s happening onstage despite the pre-recorded David Attenborough narration. B turned up in a fashion true to Biophilia‘s press billing : huge ginger afro, with an array of custom-built objects (a massive caged Tesla coil spitting lightning as rattling percussion, a group of swinging pendulums, a drummer with electronic sample-pad hand drums) and others more widely available (a pipe organ, an iPad). But Björk didn’t play anything aside from that iPad, and then only one song. Instead she moved her way throughout the loosely (but certainly) choreographed choir of 24 adorable, show-making young women wearing blue and gold outfits, singing all of her new album and a few oldies (“Isobel,” “Hidden Place,” and a performance-ending/energy-racing “Declare Independence”). I told Scott a few minutes in, it’s uncanny how much Björk sounds like Björk. He agreed. stereogum
