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Björk
Sept 8, 2008 13:08:41 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Sept 8, 2008 13:08:41 GMT -5
Björk's song "All Is Full Of Love" is covered by Ugandan children and youths on an album by a organization called Bitone (meaning "talent"). Their mission is to restore the lives and hopes of children between 8 and 18 years old in Uganda, whom have been traumatized by the death of their parents or loss of their home due to disease, war, or economic hardship. The program was founded by Branco Sekalegga and Hassan Kayemba with the vision of "Restoring Hope by Nurturing the Body and Spirit." Bitone youth are provided with basic food and shelter, a nurturing environment, an academic education, and counseling. Through learning traditional African music, dance, folklore and theater, the children build self-esteem, become self-reliant and contribute to creating a peaceful future for the next generations of Ugandans and others worldwide. The record was recorded with a laptop and one microphone in the center's living room (which also serves as the dining and bedroom depending on the hour), and is being sold as a fundraising tool for the center's growth and stability. Read more and hear the music at www.myspace.com/bitonetroupe and www.bitonechildren.org.
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Björk
Sept 15, 2008 12:09:20 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Sept 15, 2008 12:09:20 GMT -5
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Björk
Sept 20, 2008 4:30:11 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Sept 20, 2008 4:30:11 GMT -5
All is full of Love landed the second place in the vote for BEST VIDEO EVER on MTV.
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Björk
Sept 30, 2008 16:22:03 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Sept 30, 2008 16:22:03 GMT -5
Wanderlust is nominated for 3 awards for UK VMAs :
Best Art Direction in a Video Badly Drawn Boy – Promises (EMI) Bjork – Wanderlust (One Little Indian) Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor (EMI) The Hoosiers – Goodbye Mr A (Sony BMG) The Hoosiers – Worried About Ray (Sony BMG) Sonny J – Handsfree (Stateside)
Best Visual Effects in a Video Bjork – Wanderlust (One Little Indian) Chemical Brothers – Midnight Madness (Virgin) Klaxons – Not Over Yet (Polydor) Late of the Pier – Heartbeat (Parlophone) Mark Ronson feat. Lily Allen – Oh My God (Sony BMG) The Horrors – She Is The New Thing (Loog/Polydor)
Best Indie/Alternative Video Bat For Lashes – What’s A Girl To Do (Parlophone) Bjork – Wanderlust (One Little Indian) Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton – Our Hell (Last Gang) Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World (Sub Pop) Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor (EMI) The Liars - Plaster Casts of Everything (Mute)
Source Bjork.fr
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Björk
Oct 10, 2008 17:21:06 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 10, 2008 17:21:06 GMT -5
Björk and Thom Yorke, two of the mightiest figures in avant pop music, might will be joining forces for a good cause: protecting the Icelandic environment. If a promotional CD discovered by the French Björk fansite bjork.fr is to be believed (UPDATE: It is!), One Little Indian will release the new Björk single "Nattura", which features the Radiohead frontman on backing vocals. Although the promo indicates that the single is coming out this Monday, October 13, nothing about the single has been confirmed by anyone from One Little Indian or the Björk or Radiohead camps.
UPDATE: Björk's camp has confirmed that the single will indeed be released on October 20 from One Little Indian.
According to text on the promo, the song "highlights a grass roots movement in Iceland to reclaim the country’s natural resources and wilderness from the hands of big business and pollution." It is described as "more of a protest and rallying cry than a lecture." [Thanks to reader Daniel La France for the heads up.]
"Nattura" shares its name with the website Nattura.info, a gathering place for the Icelandic environmental movement. This wouldn't be the first time Björk has teamed with Nattura; this summer, she joined countrymen Sigur Rós at a concert to raise awareness for the organization. It also wouldn't be the first time Björk has teamed with Yorke. Back in 2000, the pair duetted on "I've Seen It All", a song featured in the Björk-starring Las Von Trier film Dancer in the Dark and included on its accompanying soundtrack album Selmasongs.
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Björk
Oct 11, 2008 11:32:51 GMT -5
Post by stef19 on Oct 11, 2008 11:32:51 GMT -5
I will be needing to purchase that..Thom Yorke and Bjork always a winning combo
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Björk
Oct 11, 2008 12:42:49 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 11, 2008 12:42:49 GMT -5
Yeah, cannot wait for it! It's supposed to be an upbeat song too which should be interesting!
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Björk
Oct 14, 2008 4:08:22 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 14, 2008 4:08:22 GMT -5
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Björk
Oct 14, 2008 18:27:31 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 14, 2008 18:27:31 GMT -5
Turns out "Nattura", the forthcoming Björk single with Thom Yorke, features contributions from a few other noteworthy folks-- but alas, none of them have an "ork" in their names. (Still, can you imagine what a Björk/Yorke/Mork/Swedish Chef song might sound like?)
Conceptual electronic guru and Björk remixer Matthew Herbert added synth and bass, while a pair of past Björk collaborators helped put the track together: Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale played drums on the track, and Mark Bell of LFO (but not that LFO) and Clark (but not that Clark) contributed beats.
As previously reported, One Little Indian will release "Nattura" on October 20, but according to new release information, it's an iTunes exclusive until the track's wide digital release on October 27.
Meanwhile, there's an interesting tidbit about the nature of Thom Yorke's contribution to the track in a recent Billboard.com story: "According to Radiohead's management, Yorke hasn't recorded anything new with Björk, although the possibility remains that his contribution is a sample or was taped at some point in the past." There's no word just yet from One Little Indian or Björk's camp on how Yorke's backing vocals came to be on the track. Update: according to Björk's publicist, "Björk and Thom did collaborate on [the] single during the summer while Björk was on tour. All parties involved shared various files and Björk produced the resulting song." So there you go.
Also, as suspected, all proceeds from the single's sales will benefit Náttúra, the Icelandic environmental campaign from which the song gets its name. Out of respect for the cause it benefits, we have removed the stream from our Forkcast post on the song.
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Björk
Oct 14, 2008 19:14:05 GMT -5
Post by stef19 on Oct 14, 2008 19:14:05 GMT -5
bummer they took the stream off of pitchfork. Oh well, just have to buy it then!
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Björk
Oct 15, 2008 1:59:55 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 15, 2008 1:59:55 GMT -5
Hehe, I'm sure it'll be back on outube on no-time! Trust me, the song fits nicely between Earth Intruders and Declare Independence.
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Björk
Oct 22, 2008 16:41:20 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 22, 2008 16:41:20 GMT -5
Interview: Björk [Part One] Interview by Amy Phillips Photo by Christopher Lund
When you buy the new Björk single, "Náttúra", you aren't just getting a brand new collaboration between two titans of avant-rock, Björk and Thom Yorke. You're also helping to steer the course of the future of the country of Iceland.
As previously reported, all proceeds from "Náttúra" go to the Náttúra Campaign, the Icelandic environmental movement co-founded by Björk. Náttúra's original mission was to protest the construction of foreign-backed aluminum factories in Iceland, but in recent weeks, the movement has taken a dramatic turn. In the month of October 2008, the Icelandic economy has crumbled under the weight of massive amounts of debt (sound familiar, Americans?), resulting in a government takeover of its largest banks. As the value of the Icelandic krona plummets, businesses find themselves unable to take out loans, and the cost of importing goods to the small island nation becomes prohibitively expensive, people are getting angry. And they're looking for quick fixes. One popular proposed quick fix? Building more aluminum factories.
Over the weekend, while in Reykjavík for the Iceland Airwaves festival, we sat down with Björk for a lengthy chat about "Náttúra" and the Náttúra Campaign. In the process, she outlined Náttúra's plan for the development of a new, independent, environmentally friendly Icelandic economy. It isn't a quick fix. And it isn't going to be easy. But when has Björk ever taken the easy way out?
Pitchfork: How did you become involved with the Náttúra Campaign? What is the organization's mission?
Björk: I kind of founded it. In a way, it's just me and four other people who share a Google group. [laughs] The other people include Andri [Snaer Magnason], who has written this book [Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual to a Frightened Nation] and Magga Vilhjálms, who has been my friend since I was 11. She's an actress, and she organized a concert called Hætta!, which means "stop," two years ago.
When I did the gig in the summer [the Náttúra concert] with Sigur Rós and 30,000 people came-- which is 10% of the [population of Iceland]-- we wanted to raise awareness for the environment. We did that and it was amazing. Then for six weeks, I was in hotel rooms and dressing rooms thinking fuck, that's not going to do shit. I'm gonna have to have one more whack at it, and try to be functionalist and not just ideological. As much as I don't want to get my hands dirty-- I would rather just do music-- I have to follow this up, or it was totally pointless.
I don't know where to start. If I spoke to you in a week, I would say something different, because every hour there is new information. It's so complicated. I think after Iceland's independence in 1944, we were not very sure of ourselves and our confidence was really low. It took one generation to sort of get over that. I'm second generation. My parents were born in 1945-46. Our movement at the punk times was like, we can sing in Icelandic, we are strong.
What's happening now is we grew and grew and grew from being one of the poorest nations in the world to being one of the richest. And then within the past 10 years Iceland discovered the stock market and it just went, went, went, went, went. I think it hit a roof and it's just crashed. Just a small percentage of the nation did a lot of damage.
Pitchfork: The same thing seems to have happened in America as well.
Björk: It was a combination of these people from my generation who went crazy on the stock market-- obviously I am simplifying very, very much-- and then the people in power, similar to your country, who were born in 1945-46. They are conservative capitalists who were supporting these guys, the free capitalists. They just let them loose. And all of Iceland's money evaporated.
Pitchfork: That's exactly what a lot of people in America have been saying as well, that the Bush administration's lack of regulation on business caused our current crisis.
Björk: Yes. A lot of working-class families are going to suffer, and unemployment hasn't even surfaced yet. What our movement has been more worried about is that many surveys have been done and the majority of Icelanders don't want [American aluminum company] Alcoa and these big industries to come, but they still just do it. And they don't give the nation any chance to vote for it or have a say in the matter.
In the last election, which was two years ago, everything that was talked about was green issues. Are you going to dam every single river in Iceland? There is literally a plan for every waterfall, every thermal energy place. In order to make two more aluminum plants, they have to dam all of them. They were just going to do it.
The winners of last election was this group called Samfylkingin, similar to the social parties in Scandinavia. Everybody voted for them, for the first time they won the majority. The conservative party in Iceland-- not far away from the Republicans-- for 80 years, they have had [majorities] in every election. But for the first time this party won, mostly because of green issues.
But then when all these people for the first time got into government with all of these kind of like Dick Cheneys of Iceland and George Bushes of Iceland-- you know what's going to happen. Maybe they just got the glow of power, but they were suddenly like, "Let's build an aluminum factory!"
Now the minister of industry, ministry of environment, and minister of foreign affairs are from this particular party. When they had the election, they had a list they put everywhere in the press, saying, "We are going to protect the country." You can take everything off the list. I think it's because these characters in government, these conservative capitalists born between 1940 and 1950, they are just so overpowering. It's always the same thing. And then this crash happens.
Pitchfork: How has the crash affected the environmental movement?
Björk: The minister of environment, she was supposed to stop an aluminum factory by the international airport by insisting that environmental value would happen, similar to what happens in all European countries. In Iceland they have just been like, "Who cares, let's just build the dams." She said, "It's gone too far with the planning, I can't stop it." And everybody was just like, "What! You were voted in to stop this!" Then they want to build another one up north, which would be the hugest one in Europe, if they get it built. She managed to stop it. She said we need environmental value, we are sacrificing too much. And now, after what happened last week, everybody in parliament, the right, they are saying, just ignore the environmental value, dam everything.
You know, the Russians are loaning us a lot of money. Roman Abramovich, the billionaire who bought [the soccer team] Chelsea in London, he got rich by aluminum factories. Now the news says that he is going to buy a lot of aluminum factories and make Iceland the biggest aluminum smelter in the world.
Pitchfork: Do the people of Iceland think that this is the answer to their economic problems?
Björk: The country's really split. I personally think that it's the generation that was born in the 40s that only sees very right-wing free trade. It's like they want to catch up. Iceland missed out on 600 years of industrialization, which was a bummer, but they want to catch up. They want to be like Germany, like, now. They want to build all these 19th century huge factories that eat up the environment. They think that's the only solution.
The extreme right-wing think environmentalists are just people in woolen sweaters who want to live in a cave and go back to medieval times and sing hippie songs. This is so not the case.
So I came two months ago and I started meeting with all of the job development centers in the countryside and saying OK, what are people suggesting in the countryside? Because there, a lot of them are like, "All the fish is gone, what should we do? Oh, Alcoa! They'll just build a factory and I just need to turn up." No, you have to grow from the roots up, you have to start small. It takes forever, two people are working at the company, and in ten years, maybe you can have five. We need to see what Iceland can do.
What I've discovered by talking to these people at the University of Reykjavík is there are so many companies that are amazing here, that are world class in biotechnics, in high-tech stuff, in computers, in artificial intelligence. These people have been on the verge of starting companies. They've got business plans, they've got everything, but they're not getting any support financially from the government or the private fundraisers. Because all the money went to this stock market roller coaster ride.
We'd been working for eight weeks, and then suddenly this thing happens a week ago. I was like, whoa. We were going to investors, setting up workshops, and introducing people to each other. We got the MBA students at the University to make business plans for the companies in the countryside who don't know how to make business plans but have amazing ideas. This is what we've been doing for the past few weeks.
This has to be our answer. What's really important now… it's such a moment of danger. All the people who are losing their jobs in the banks, who are going bankrupt, we are hoping they will get into these industries, believe in this, build this purely Icelandic thing up with Icelandic money, Icelandic companies. Icelandic people are really educated. But maybe we are at where the people in the States were 50 years ago, where they think that stuff that isn't done with a hammer or physical power is not a job. It's that backwards.
For example, there's a company here in Iceland called CCP. They made their own computer game and now they have 400 people working for them here in Iceland. We're saying that's the same manpower that's in an aluminum factory. And it's not just working class low paid jobs, functioning as a third world country for Alcoa, doing the dirty job for them, taking all the pollution and all the shit and just moving it somewhere else. We should make companies here made of Icelanders, both working class and the brainpower, discover new things that stay in the country. This is a problem on so many levels.
We're having it again tomorrow. We are going to try to make the MBAs make business plans for groups tomorrow. Because the groups need to work together. We're going to try to make a center for all the high-tech companies that are just ideas. It's one big institution where everybody who has a good idea goes and they all work together and help each other and then companies start to come out of there. But it takes like eight years. For me, it's sort of like a record company. It's like an indie label in a way. It's grassroots, where all these people can come and feed off of each other and get support. Where if one person gets a good idea, the other five will help them..
Another example of where we have to work together as a group is the health spas. [laughs] (I know, what have I gotten myself into? It's hilarious.) Iceland is only 300,000 people and there is a health spa here and another one here and they are in competition with each other. There are all these little swimming pools. We need a map of all of those and present it as one thing.
Tomorrow there's a workshop on clusters in Iceland. We've got the possible high-tech cluster, the possible health spa cluster, the possible culture cluster, possible travel business cluster, possible biotech cluster. It's especially for the rural areas, they need to work together. They're going to discuss how it's going to help us to work together, and how it's going to hinder us. Maybe the high-tech cluster needs a totally different support mechanism than the food cluster, for example.
I don't have answers to those questions. I work more as a medium to link these people together, and asking everybody to stop this competitive whatever. My motive was I don't want more aluminum factories. And now my motive is a lot of other peoples' motives as well. A lot of people in Iceland are saying what we need now is support for sustainable seed companies for a lot of different reasons. A lot of people are doing it because they're bankrupt and they can't go abroad and get more loans now because nobody will loan Iceland money. So that's where it's at now.
Pitchfork: Will these initiatives have a chance to get off the ground before there are more aluminum factories? Or are they going to take the crisis as an opportunity to ram this stuff through?
Björk: For the last two weeks, Icelanders are getting a crash course in economics. I mean, I didn't know about these things two weeks ago. The news is full of right-wing guys saying, "Stop the environmental value stuff! We should just build factories everywhere now, because that's where the money is!" And the thing is-- sorry I'm going to sound like a politician now-- but they're putting numbers in the papers that aren't true, saying that what we are getting from the fish industry every year is this much, and then just a little bit below that is what we're getting from aluminum. They're saying that aluminum is almost is as big as fish today-- that we are getting 100 billion [Icelandic] krona a year from aluminum. The thing is, the energy companies who built those dams-- the biggest aluminum smelter in Europe today that was built in the east, that was built two years ago...
Pitchfork: Wait, you already have the biggest aluminum plant in Europe and they want to build a bigger one?
Björk: We already have three. They want three more. They built a dam for Alcoa that cost $3 billion. They took that loan abroad to build this dam. Alcoa didn't pay anything on that. Iceland paid for that dam, and then they are selling Alcoa energy at a discount...They want to take more loans to do the same thing again.
The thing is, in the aluminum factories here, there's not many Icelandic people working there. There's mostly Polish immigrants. If you are from a fishing village with 1,000 people or something and everybody's leaving the town to Reykjavík, and you're 18, and there's an aluminum factory coming, is that very exciting? I mean, some people, of course, want to work there. But not all people, and especially not women. There are also numbers from Alaska and remote areas that have said, OK, big industry is our answer, and then nobody wants to work there.
These aluminum smelters, nobody wants to build them in Europe, because there's so much pollution. So it's like, "Oh, just go dump them in Iceland." We are getting them energy for so cheap that they are saving so much money by doing all this here.
Instead, what we are saying is, we've got three aluminum factories, let's work with that, we cannot change that. Why not have the Icelandic people who are educated in high-tech and work already in those factories in the higher paid jobs, why not let them build little companies who are totally Icelandic with the knowledge they have? Then they get the money and it stays in the country. Then we can support the biotech companies and the food companies and all these clusters. I think that if you want to be an environmentalist in Iceland, these are the things you've got to be putting your energy into.
A lot of investors [are] coming, and I'm hoping they will want to invest in the high-tech cluster. There are money people here that did not lose a lot of money. For example, here is one investment company in Iceland only run by women. They are doing fine. [laughs] They aren't risk junkies. They just made slow moves. The people who are crashing, they took a huge loan and then another huge loan, and so on. And it's all just air. But these women didn't build on air.
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Björk
Oct 22, 2008 16:42:00 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 22, 2008 16:42:00 GMT -5
Few things bring as much excitement to adventurous ears as the promise of new music from Björk. But last week, when it was announced that Björk's new single "Náttúra" also features backing vocals from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke (not to mention contributions from Matthew Herbert and Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale), the excitement level was off the charts.
Monday, October 20, the single went on sale on iTunes via One Little Indian (it will hit other digital outlets on October 27). All proceeds from "Náttúra" will go to the Náttúra Campaign, the Icelandic environmental movement co-founded by Björk. Náttúra seeks to stop the construction of foreign-backed aluminum factories in Iceland and promote the local economy.
Over the weekend, while in Reykjavik for the Iceland Airwaves festival, we sat down with Björk for a lengthy chat about "Náttúra"-- how the track was created, how Thom Yorke, Matthew Herbert, and Brian Chippendale got involved-- and the Náttúra Campaign, as well as where her sonic adventures are going to take her next. The full text of the interview will run in two parts today and tomorrow. For now, we've excerpted a portion of the conversation concerning what's forthcoming musically for Björk.
Part one of the interview is here. Stay tuned tomorrow for much more from Björk.
P: What's next for you in terms of your music? Are you working on any other projects, or is Náttúra your only focus?
B: Well, this has been taking me two months now. I'm staying maybe one more month right now. I'm not very good at doing two things at the same time. I've never been good at the walk and bubblegum thing. I've been doing this 16 hours a day. I haven't had a day off. But it's very exciting, too, just to meet all these people doing really fertile stuff. It's sort of where I come from anyway, hanging out with people who believe in something incredible. DIY kind of. It's really exciting. I'm also meeting a lot of people that sort of have to do with what I want to do next anyway, but sometimes it's good not to plan too much, just kind of jump in there and see what happens.
I know very well inside me what the beginning point is. There's going to be a lot of craftsmanship involved, similar maybe more to Vespertine, which took me like three years to make, and a lot of it was just me sitting around with a laptop, making microbeats. There were like from 40 to 120 tracks of noises on every single song, it was like mosaic.
Volta was very immediate, a very physical project. I knew when I was making it, I could have spent probably three more years on it and do it much better, but I just needed to be spontaneous and physical and go out. Because I hadn't toured for four years, I had to nourish that side of me, to be on stage in front of a crowd, more visceral. Maybe it was after having a baby, you sort of go in a cocoon, you kind of go less physical, more programming. [Björk's daughter Isadora is six years old.]
So I think I've come around and I want to make an album now that probably will take me four years to make or three. I think it's too early to talk about the details because it will jinx it. But I know sort of what it's about. And in a funny way, it's not that unrelated to all the people I'm meeting here in Iceland. That's how things are sometimes.
P: Are you planning on releasing anything else related to Volta? Are there more singles in the works?
B: I think my record company in London, One Little Indian, wants to make a package where all the videos are included together with the live concerts. We filmed Paris, and we also filmed a concert here with a choir and a brass quartet, so it was a mixture of songs from Medulla and Volta. Because I never really toured Medulla so we never really filmed that. So I think there will be some wrapping up of everything from Volta in one box. Also remixes.
P: You are known for putting out a lot of releases to accompany each record.
B: They are really good with that. For my tastes, I think sometimes, they release a little bit too much, I'm like waaait a minute. But I've got to respect him, he's very supportive of what I do, Derek [Birkett, One Little Indian co-founder]. We both come from a sort of punk rock background, where we were trying to do the opposite of what the huge record companies were doing, where nothing was released except greatest hits or something. We come from another standpoint.
I mean, I've never been thinking that if you're a fan you have to buy everything that somebody puts out. I mean, you've got a choice. If you don't want it, just don’t buy it. It's also a reaction to YouTube and sharing of files. A lot of it is really bad sound, really low quality. So the librarian in me wants it at least to exist there so that in 20 years when I'm sitting in my rocking chair, it will still exist in the best sound quality possible, even though it only sold 1000 units or whatever. As much as I love the whole pirate kind of thing, the quality suffers.
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Björk
Oct 27, 2008 11:28:34 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 27, 2008 11:28:34 GMT -5
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Björk
Oct 30, 2008 8:12:58 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 30, 2008 8:12:58 GMT -5
Björk has continued her fight to protect Iceland's fragile environment (while helping to uplift the country's struggling economy) with an editorial in yesterday's London Times. (Via The Daily Swarm.) In the piece, titled "After financial meltdown, now it's smeltdown", she touches on many of the points discussed in her recent Pitchfork interview, focusing on the importance of halting the construction of more aluminum factories in the Icelandic wilderness.
"Usually I don't notice politics," Björk writes. I live happily in the land of music-making. But I got caught up in it because politicians seem bent on ruining Iceland's natural environment." As the country's economic crisis continues, many people in power are attempting to get these factories built quickly, without any precautions taken to prevent pollution. They see the aluminum industry as the key to getting Iceland out of debt.
Björk disagrees:
"Iceland is a small country. We missed out on an industrial revolution and my hope was that we would skip it completely and go straight to sustainable hi-tech options. If anyone could achieve this, we could. There is a wonderful characteristic in the Icelandic mentality - fearlessness, with an addiction to risk-taking to the point of being foolhardy. In music-making, storytelling and creative thought, this risk-taking is a great thing. And after my introduction to a lot of Iceland's small, growing companies, I realise how many of them have shown this fearless approach either in biotechnology or high technology."
Through her work with the Náttúra Campaign, Björk is helping to nurture those startup Icelandic companies. As previously reported, proceeds from the sales of "Náttúra", Björk's new digital single featuring Thom Yorke, go to the Náttúra Campaign.
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Björk
Oct 31, 2008 10:32:52 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 31, 2008 10:32:52 GMT -5
After touring for 18 months I was excited to return home 8 weeks ago to good, solid Iceland and enjoy a little bit of stability. I had done a concert there earlier this year to raise awareness about local environmental issues - especially alternatives to aluminium smelters - and 10 per cent of the nation came to it; but I still felt it wasn’t enough.
So when I got home I decided to contact people all over the island who had attempted to start new companies and bring in new ways of working, but had not succeeded. For a long time Iceland’s main income had been fishing, but when that become uneconomic, people started looking for other ways to earn a living. The conservatives in power thought that harnessing Iceland’s natural energy and selling it to huge companies such as Alcoa and Rio Tinto would solve the problem.
Now we have three aluminum smelters, some of the biggest in Europe; and in the space of the next three years they want to build two more. A lot of Icelanders are against this. They would rather continue to develop smaller companies that they own themselves and keep the money they earn. Many battles have been fought in Iceland on these issues.
In one of these battles the Minister for the Environment forced Alcoa to include the impacts of energy exploiting in their Environmental Impact Assessment. The smelter would need energy from a handful of new geothermal power plants and possibly also some dams. This would damage pristine wilderness, hot springs and lava fields. To take this much energy from the geothermal fields is not even sustainable.
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Björk
Oct 31, 2008 16:44:54 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Oct 31, 2008 16:44:54 GMT -5
The remastering and repressing of Debut get a storming review. The combination of digital and vinyl just makes our day here a bjork.com
"The record, previously a single disc affair, has now been mastered over two discs to run at 45rpm, the higher sampling rate ensuring the highest quality playback. It also allows the mastering engineer to spread the music widely over each side ofpeople who can take the thing apart and put it back together.” HiFi World
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Björk
Nov 13, 2008 3:38:09 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Nov 13, 2008 3:38:09 GMT -5
Rolling Stone 100 Greatest Singers Of All Time
#60 - Björk by Chris Martin
"When you land in Iceland, you feel like you're somewhere a bit magical. Maybe it's the volcanic activity, maybe it's the dried fish, but something's going on: Everyone seems to be extraordinarily beautiful, and everyone appears to be able to sing. Their singers are so far ahead of everyone else — especially Björk. Her voice is so specific and such a new color. Now that she's been around for 20 years, everyone forgets quite how extraordinary she is. She could be singing the theme from Sesame Street, and it would sound completely different to how anyone else would do it, and completely magical.
She first crossed my radar on "Big Time Sensuality," from that video where she's on the back of a flatbed truck. I really got into her on Homogenic, largely because there's so much space left for the singing. On that album, there are strings and beats, but it isn't very full musically, so she has to do all the dynamics and everything. If you really want to hear what she can do, listen to "It's Oh So Quiet," from Post: She can go from zero to 60 faster than any other vehicle in terms of singing. And then to angry.
In that movie Dancer in the Dark, she's singing as a different person and it stills sounds completely genuine. She could be an opera singer or she could be a pop singer. Dulux Paint has a catalog that has all the colors you can buy of paint, right? That is how Björk's voice is. She can do anything. In our studio, there are pictures on the wall of our favorite artists. I can see Mozart, Jay-Z, Gershwin, PJ Harvey, E.E. and Björk."
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Björk
Dec 18, 2008 14:21:24 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Dec 18, 2008 14:21:24 GMT -5
Apparently her and Matthew are no longer together...
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Björk
Dec 18, 2008 18:42:21 GMT -5
Post by Modern Method. on Dec 18, 2008 18:42:21 GMT -5
Björk and Audur Capital Support Innovation Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk and Icelandic financial services provider Audur Capital have established a joint venture fund called BJÖRK, after the singer. The fund will be used to invest in seed companies in Iceland. “It’s Audur’s idea and it’s a great honor that [the fund] is named after me,” Björk told Morgunbladid when she and Audur’s chief executives, Halla Tómasdóttir and Kristín Pétursdóttir, presented their initiative yesterday. It is hoped that the fund will have close to ISK 2 billion (USD 17 million, EUR 12 million) in capital and that companies will be able to apply for grants from the fund next year. Audur Capital has already contributed ISK 100 million (USD 867,000, EUR 614,000) to the fund. www.icelandreview.com/icelandrev ... _id=317204 www.audurcapital.is/english/abou ... ews/nr/190
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