Bjork explains all

“Volta” (Björk)

I've always had a crush on Bjork, from her days as part of the Sugarcubes. Some of her solo stuff leaves me cold, some is good, but she's still a cool cat.

Greg Kot conducts a fairly long interview with her, including this tidbit:

Bjork explains all : Kot: Has the Internet changed the way an artist such as yourself makes music? And what impact has it had on the album, with music fans now listening more and more to individual MP3 files rather than entire albums?

Bjork: When I wrote “Vespertine,” I wrote it thinking it would be downloaded. And I picked all the noises that sound great in the virtual reality world: harp, glockenspiel, celeste, whispering, distant swooping strings, and so on. Changing formats like that can be creative sonically. I feel overall the whole marketing machine that was built on top of a song from the ‘50s until now wasn’t meant to last. It was kinda weird anyway with the artist getting 3 percent [per album sale] and 23,948,572,093 people in an office with jobs with weird names getting 97 percent.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of people doing a great job out there but if you look at the whole picture it wasn’t in balance. With “Volta” I created sound design between the tracks to make the whole album into a journey, but the tracks can also be individually downloaded. I like both songs and albums. You don’t have to pick. If you like both, you can have both. I feel music will always win in the end. People need music. That won’t go away.

Kot: When you choose collaborators such as [Nigerian kora master] Toumani Diabate, [Congolese band] Konono No 1 and [Chinese pipa virtuoso] Min Xiao-Fen for the new album, are you looking for something specific from them, or is it a case of just being curious about what might happen, with no expectations? Have you ever been disappointed by the results?

Bjork: Usually the song rules and I am serving the song and we just try out stuff. Most of the time it works out. I only work with people anyway where there is already a bit of chemistry going on, and then you just babystep it. And that babystep that went over the line you just mildly undo it. I can’t remember being disappointed, maybe you choose to forget that stuff. But it isn’t only up to the people to be marvelous. If it doesn’t work out it is also my fault for not setting up the right situation. But mostly it is a very positive thing.

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