Released on 5 October 2011 "Biophilia" was the 7th.,studio album by Icelandic singer Björk who 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 was 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. The album spawned the singles "Crystalline, "Cosmonogy", "Virus" & "Moon." Another track related to the project, "Náttúra", was released as a single in 2008.
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. Biophilia was partly composed on an Apple iPad.
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" had different musical cycles that repeat throughout the song; the song "Thunderbolt" contained arpeggios, inspired by the time between when lightning is seen and thunder is heard; and in "Solstice", the counterpoint made 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 presented metaphors to those phenomena. "Dark Matter" features heavy gibberish since the dark matter phenomena were directly "unexplainable". "Virus" described "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" presented 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 broke the typical 4/4 time signature structure for many of the songs on Biophilia. For example, "Solstice" features 7/4 and 6/4 time signatures; "Hollow", "Crystalline" and "Moon", all feature a17/8 time signature; "Mutual Core", 5/4 time signature and "Virus", 3/4 time signature. In addition, "Dark Matter" was in free-time, it lacks a regular pulse.
The Biophilia app consists of a series of 10 separate apps, one for each song, all included in a "mother app" which contains a menu made up by a three-dimensional constellation which the user can shift, zoom and orbit by swiping their fingers to open the apps. The first time the app was opened, an introduction by David Attenborough described the application and the project itself. This introduction was also used to open the Biophilia tour residency concerts. On the up left corner, the "musical compass" icon serves as a home button to return to the menu. If the icon is touched when the user is already facing the menu, a list of the application, including two pages for "how to navigate" and "credits", would appear.
Every app was named after the corresponding song and included different options, along with a description of the song and application. This short description link to an essay written for each song by Nikki Debben. The first option in the apps was to play the app, the second was the score, in which the user can look at the composition of the song, use it as a karaoke machine as the score had no vocals in it, or turn off the music and use it as sheet music. The animation option linked to an animation of the song created by Stephen Malinowski, in which different forms of different colors, linked to a specific instrument in the song, including Björk's voice, zoom in or out depending on their intensity. The fourth option showed the lyrics of the song, which were not available in the "Dark Matter" app as it is sung in gibberish and thus has no lyrics at all. The last option was to scroll the credits, which name the people who have worked in the app. The "mother app", "Cosmogony", was the constellation that includes all the other applications, and thus contains no particular game or instrument to play. Nevertheless, it contained two other options, which were the possibility to replay the intro narrated by Attenborough and to play the song in its entirety. When the user played the song, whether they would click on the compass icon they would return to the main menu immediately. Tapping in an empty space of the constellation would also make the user return to the main screen. The apps were roughly divided into two kinds: the ones in which the user play a sort of games, and the other ones that work like a musical instrument.
Almost every song on the app was presented in early, work-in-progress versions. For example, tracks like "Thunderbolt", "Sacrifice" and "Hollow" were missing their percussion parts and beats as they were added to the songs shortly before the album's physical release when Björk decided these early versions were unsatisfactory for a traditional music album. While "Sacrifice" missed beats and was performed at a slightly lower speed, the most interesting early version of a Biophilia track is "Solstice"; the album version was recorded live during her Manchester residency but the app originally contained a demo version performed in studio. In addition to these work-in-progress versions, several of the games featured the songs with sections of music missing, to be played and manipulated by the player ("Thunderbolt" for example has the player drag their fingers across the screen to play the Tesla coil baseline).
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario