There is a lot of press on Biophilia, but only a few sources with in-depth interviews with Björk explaining the whole project. Here are the best so far:
Björk Talks Biophilia, Brandon Stosuy, Stereogum, June 29, 2011
“I tried to have each song as emotionally different as possible. [The song] ‘DNA’ is about rhythm, but I also wanted it to be about the emotional, my relationship with my ancestors. That was just as important, to prove science nerds wrong, to unite the scientific and the emotional. ‘Moon’ is very melancholic and about rebirth and the lunar cycles but it’s also just about the math of a full moon. [I wanted the music to] weave seamlessly into science, a natural element, and musicology. Our times seem to be so much about redefining where we are physical and where we’re not. For me, it is really exciting to take the cutting edge technology and take it as far as it can get virtually, use it to describe/control the musicology or the behavior of raw natural elements, and then plug it with a sound source which is the most acoustic one there is — like gamelan and pipe organ. So you get the extremes: Very virtual and very physical. In that way you shift the physicality.”
The Science of Song, The Song of Science, Jon Pareles, New York Times, July 1, 2011
“‘I didn’t intend it to go so big,’ Bjork said with rueful pride in an interview before the performance. ‘It’s the way most complex project I’ve ever done. There’s been like 500,000 million e-mails and meetings.’ But from their beginnings, the songs on ‘Biophilia’ had a grand ambition: to unify music, nature (as described by science) and technology.”
How Björk’s ‘Biophilia’ album fuses music with iPad apps, Charlie Burton, Wired UK, August, 2011
“The app model is one she hopes to use long-term. ‘I have a feeling that for many years I won’t have to tear things up by the roots again. I can [release] songs in my own time and I have an iPad app I can write from,’ she says. For now, apps will also replace her music videos – and in the future she may stop producing physical CDs, to free herself from the production deadlines they involve.”
The Whole World In Her Hands: Björk Interviewed, Luke Turner, The Quietus, July 22, 2011
“Unlike so many of the new formats and futures of music we’ve been promised in the years since the business took a dive down the dumper, Biophilia genuinely does feel radical, futurist. Even more exciting, it feels as if Bjork isn’t just breaking new ground in music, but the world of apps too. It seems certain that Biophilia won’t, unlike many apps downloaded, be used only once. This is of course not to mention the educational aspect, something that emerges all the more strongly during our three hours sat in her living room, overlooking the North Atlantic, newspaper cuttings about the recent Grimsvotn eruption on the table. On the plane home a few hours later, I can’t help but think that Bjork reminds me of a 21st Century William Blake, a visionary fascinated by the potential of science and the wonder of the natural world, a master in the pioneering disciplines of the age.”
Björk on Biophilia and her Debt to UK Dance Music, Liam Allen, BBC News, July 28, 2011
“The abum was inspired by touchscreen devices which preceded the iPad, enabling musicians to play sounds by pressing the screen. ’Because I don’t play the piano or guitar, and usually I’ve always written my music when I am just walking outside, I’ve finally found something that’s appealing to me as an accompaniment,’ she says, ‘I can just scrabble with my fingers – it’s a breakthrough for me.’”
