Biophilia is the seventh studio album by Icelandic singer Björk. It was released on 5 October 2011 by One Little Indian Records and distributed by Nonesuch Records in North America and by Universal Music Group in the rest of the world. Björk composed it as a concept album during the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis, exploring the links between nature, music and technology. Billed as the first "app album", Biophilia is a multimedia project released alongside a series of apps linking the album's themes to musicology concepts. It was followed by a series of educational workshops on four continents.
Four singles were issued before the album's release in 2011. "Crystalline", co-produced with English dubstep duo 16bit, was released as the lead single on 28 June 2011, accompanied by a music video directed by longtime collaborator Michel Gondry. It was followed by the singles "Cosmogony", "Virus" and "Moon". Björk promoted the album with the Biophilia tour, which began at the Manchester International Festival in June 2011 and ended in September 2013. Another track related to the project, "Náttúra", was released as a single in 2008.
Biophilia received critical acclaim and was named one of the best albums of 2011 by several publications; it was nominated for two awards at the 55th Grammy Awards in 2013, winning Best Recording Package. It debuted in the top 40 of every chart it entered worldwide, topping the Taiwan chart and peaking in the top 5 in Iceland, France and Denmark. In 2014, Biophilia became the first app included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Biophilia was followed by two remix series in 2011 and 2012, collected in the remix album Bastards, and music videos for the songs "Moon", "Crystalline", "Hollow" and "Mutual Core". The recording of the album was documented in the 2013 film When Björk Met Attenborough and a concert film from the tour, Biophilia Live, was released in 2014.
Background
Biophilia grew from Björk's interest in nature and concerns about the environment. In June 2008, she performed a concert with the Icelandic band Sigur Rós to raise awareness about the use of Iceland's natural resources in aluminium melting plants. She founded the Náttúra organisation to promote Icelandic nature and grassroots industries, and released a single, "Náttúra", on 20 October 2008. A week later, Björk wrote an article for The Times discussing the proposed sale of natural resources to ease the Icelandic financial crisis. In collaboration with Audur Capital, she set up a venture capital fund to support sustainable industries in Iceland. On 30 June 2010, Björk and Dirty Projectors released a joint EP, Mount Wittenberg Orca, with proceeds going to marine protected areas.
In September 2010, the renewable power company Magma Energy acquired 98.5% of shares in the Icelandic geothermal power company HS Orka. On 21 May 2010, Björk wrote an open letter to the Reykjavík Grapevine calling on the Icelandic government to "do everything in its power to revoke the contracts with Magma Energy". After the deal was approved by the Icelandic Government, Björk launched a petition and promoted it with a performance at the Nordic House in Reykjavík on 19 July.
At the end of 2010, Björk confirmed she was working on a new album. In an interview published on Fréttablaðið she stated that the project was half-complete and that she hoped to tour before the end of 2011. On 6 January 2011 she started a three-day public karaoke marathon to protest the Magma Energy deal; the accompanying petition was signed by 47,000 people. The petition was welcomed by Iceland prime minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir.
The app Solar System, made by Touch Press, came out in January 2011, and featured a new instrumental track by Björk as an introduction. The demo track was confirmed to be a part of the upcoming Biophilia project. The details of the project were announced when the first Biophilia live show was announced for the Manchester International Festival in June 2011. Biophilia was stated to encompass music, apps, internet, installations and live shows.
Composition
Biophilia was partly composed on an Apple iPad.
"Crystalline", the first single released, is a mostly electronic song, featuring a continuous "gameleste" base and electronic beats and rhythm. After the bridge, the song features a gameleste solo, and ends with an uproarious breakcore section which uses the Amen break.
New musical instruments were specially developed for the album, and specially for the shows at the Manchester International Festival that took place in mid-2011 to introduce the album. The Tesla coil was used as a musical instrument on the song "Thunderbolt". A "gameleste", a mixture between a gamelan and a celesta which was programmed in order to be played remotely by a tablet computer, was also used in "Crystalline" and "Virus". A group of pendulums were put together, creating patterns with their moves, transmitting the movements of the Earth to the sound of a harp, making the song "Solstice".
For the music, Björk related the phenomenon the song describes to a musical structure or resource. For example; the song "Moon" has different musical cycles that repeat throughout the song; the song "Thunderbolt" contains arpeggios, inspired by the time between when lightning is seen and thunder is heard; and in "Solstice", the counterpoint makes reference to the movement of planets and the Earth's rotation, and the pendulums used on the song make tribute to the Foucault pendulum.
The lyrics also present metaphors to those phenomena. "Dark Matter" features heavy gibberish since the dark matter phenomena are directly "unexplainable". "Virus" describes "fatal relationships" such as the relationship between a virus and a cell, as Björk explained: "It's like I have this new neighbour that I have to sort of learn to live with"; "Solstice" presents the relation between the gravity effect on celestial bodies, comparing the Solar System to a Christmas tree; and in "Hollow", Björk took inspiration from her "ancestors and DNA, that the grounds open below you and you can feel your mother and her mother, and her mother, and her mother, and her mother 30,000 years back. So suddenly you're this kinda tunnel, or trunk of DNA… All these ghosts come up so it ended up being a Halloween song and quite gothic in a way… It's like being part of this everlasting necklace when you're just a bead on a chain and you sort of want to belong and be a part of it and it's just like a miracle."
Björk also breaks the typical time signature structure for many of the songs on Biophilia. For example, "Solstice" features and time signatures; "Hollow", "Crystalline" and "Moon", all feature a time signature; "Mutual Core", time signature and "Virus", time signature. In addition, "Dark Matter" is in free-time, it lacks a regular pulse.
Biophilia is Björk's last album with frequent collaborator Mark Bell; Bell died from medical surgery complications in October 2014.
Release and artwork
When the first details about Biophilia emerged, the album was expected to be released around the beginning of the residency at the Manchester International Festival in June. Eventually, the album was confirmed for a Fall 2011 release. The album was originally announced for a 27 September 2011 release in the United States.
Pre-order for the album started on 19 July 2011. Along with the standard edition album, which would be available in physical and digital formats, three additional editions were announced. The first, the deluxe edition, available in digipak format in its physical form, would contain three additional tracks. The second special edition, billed the Manual edition, was announced to include the standard edition of Biophilia and a bonus disc, both contained in a "48-page, full-color, hardbound, cloth-covered, and thread-sewn book, tipped on lenticular panel to the front cover, with foil-blocked spine and back cover". The last edition, called the Ultimate Art Edition, included the Manual Edition of Biophilia in a wooden box, which was filled with 10 chromed tuning forks, each one adjusted to the tone of a Biophilia track, covering a complete octave in a non-conventional scale. Differently from the standard and deluxe edition of the album, those two latter editions were available to pre-order until 12 August 2011. Moreover, the Ultimate Art edition was limited to only 200 copies and 75 artist's proofs (a.p.), each one numbered and made to order. She was criticized for the cost of this latter edition, which was £500. Björk unveiled the track listing for Biophilia on 19 August 2011. It was later confirmed that the second disc included in the Manual edition would include a live recording of the Biophilia show in Manchester.
On 10 May 2011, Björk relaunched her official website. Using a HTML5 constellation designed by M/M Paris, the website shifts around as the visitor moves the cursor. In June 2011, she started posting photos of different minerals and crystals on her Facebook official page. One of those images, which was accompanied by the comment "...introducing" was used as a placeholder cover art for the pre-order of the album and mistaken for the official album cover. Eventually, Björk unveiled the cover for the album on 17 August 2011. The cover artwork, designed by longtime collaborators M/M Paris and shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, features Björk, wearing an Iris van Herpen haute couture brown and golden dress, taken from the designer's Synesthesia 2010 collection, along with a "harp-belt" made by Threeasfour, and a red wig, resembling a nebula, created by British hairstylist Eugene Souleiman, holding an orange crystal while being surrounded by the Biophilia constellation which appears in the app. According to Björk, she was inspired by the protagonist of British-Mexican surrealist novelist Leonora Carrington's book The Hearing Trumpet to create the persona of a "frustrated music teacher" which always has her "head in the clouds" to explain her concepts to people around her, an attitude she thought she had while explaining her idea for Biophilia to her collaborators, and that's why she decided to wear wigs throughout the whole Biophilia era and promotion.
On 1 September 2011, she announced a postponement of the album's release date, pushing it back two weeks after the former date. This was because of Björk's dissatisfaction with the final mastering of the album. Björk explained in a statement published on her Facebook page that she felt the album version needed more depth than the version featured on the app. She called long-time collaborator Leila Arab to work on the tracks, and in turn Arab recommended her mastering engineer Mandy Parnell and drum & bass artist Current Value. Parnell flew to Reykjavík to work on the record in Addi 800's mastering studio, where she spent different hours with Björk discussing the changes to make on the album. At the end, Parnell remastered all of Biophilia songs, while Arab added beats and sonic sculpting to "Crystalline", "Thunderbolt", "Dark Matter" and "Virus". Current Value added beats to "Sacrifice", which was originally played completely acoustic during the Manchester residency. Björk also decided to use a live recording of "Solstice" instead of the studio version. Three weeks before the supposed release, the album was leaked on the internet. Björk called the leak "frustrating but predictable". NPR officially offered a streaming of the album on 5 October 2011, the same day in which it was first officially released in Japan. Biophilia was worldwide released in the following days, most notably on 10 October in the United Kingdom and on 11 October in the United States.
App