Björk, 51, played a about accomplished adaptation of the anthology for me during one of her abrupt stays in New York City this year, on a clammy day aback in July. (She has aback been to London, to her home in Iceland, and on bout to Moscow, Buenos Aires and Tbilisi, bamboozlement concerts with her band, gigs as a disc jockey and curating Björk Digital, a traveling exhibition of her virtual-reality videos, which she will aggrandize with songs from “Utopia.”) That afternoon, she was outfitted in a checkered dress with an absurd cut. After arena through the anthology on her stereo, she conversed volubly about the music beyond her kitchen table, over cups of able coffee.
“I started cerebration about this anthology as graffiti in the clouds,” she said. “It doesn’t accept gravity. It’s added like amphibian in the air.”
The anthology concludes with “Future Forever,” with ablaze chords and Björk’s articulation amphibian aloft silences; she invokes a amiable matriarchy. “Imagine a approaching and be in it/feel this absurd nurture, absorb it in,” she sings, again turns to tech advice. “Your accomplished is a bend — about-face it off.”
But Björk has been absorption on the accomplished in the deathwatch of the animal delinquency allegations adjoin Harvey Weinstein and others, and has absitively to account with it. In a contempo blast call, she addressed an adventure from her activity that she had absitively to air. In October, she acquaint on Facebook that she had faced exceptionable touches and animal advances from a “Danish director”: acutely Lars von Trier, who directed her in the 2000 blur “Dancer in the Dark.” “I don’t appetite to be aloof in this,” Björk said on the buzz from Iceland. “There are women out there that got it way worse than me.”
But aback account about Mr. Weinstein, she said, she was addled by “how he acclimated the media adjoin the ladies.” Stories had broadcast at the time of filming that Björk was “difficult” on the set. But she said: “I was actual conscientious. I showed up for every shoot on time,” until there was a altercation over ascendancy of her music.
“When I talked about this activity with Lars, he consistently promised me I had abounding ascendancy of my music,” she said. “But I was axis up at ball rehearsals, and somebody abroad had been alteration my music in a way that was absolutely musically wrong. And they would accumulate cogent me, ‘Oh, it belongs to us now, it’s not yours.’
“After two months of aloof axis up for every distinct thing, and absolutely aloof accepting all the aggravation and aloof acceptable allotment of the accomplished — aloof befitting on accomplishing what I was told, basically — I had one weekend area I stood up. I could angle up as a artist and say, ‘I’m not abiding aback to assignment on Monday unless I get abounding ascendancy of my music.’ And that took one day. On Monday night, they said yes, and again on Tuesday, I alternate to work.”
After Björk’s Facebook posts, Mr. von Trier’s abettor told Rolling Stone, “Lars declines the accusations Björk has made, but doesn’t ambition to animadversion any further.” The Guardian appear that Mr. von Trier had told a Danish bi-weekly that he had not sexually addled her. “That was not the case,” he told the newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. “But that we were absolutely not friends, that’s a fact.” Attempts to ability Mr. von Trier for animadversion for this commodity accustomed no response.
Björk declared a far happier alive ambiance during the authoritative of “Utopia.” Like “Vulnicura,” the new anthology almost resembles music for pop radio playlists or ball clubs. It’s generally close and disorienting, with alienated layers of vocals, flutes and percussive sounds. The songs are affiliated to alcove music and to the cyberbanking analysis of Björk’s assistant throughout the album, the cyberbanking artist Arca (Alejandro Ghersi), who grew up on Björk’s music. “He knew my aback archive bigger than I did,” she said.
Arca, who has additionally formed on advance for Kanye West and the R&B accompanist Kelela, abutting Björk partway through the authoritative of “Vulnicura,” and went on to bout with her amidst his own abounding abandoned efforts.
While Björk’s abounding antecedent co-producers accept been enlisted to advice assassinate her ideas, “Utopia” is afterpiece to a abounding partnership. “What was altered was that me and Alejandro were merging,” Björk said. “We acquainted like we could address 50 albums, because it was so fun. At aboriginal we were absolutely afraid because the generational gap is appealing ample amid us, and again we ample out that philosophically, we allotment a lot of things. And there’s an optimistic and a celebrational aspect in both of our music that we absolutely like.”
Arca acclaim steered her against his admired lesser-known Björk tracks, both instrumentals: “Ambergris March,” from her account for “Drawing Restraint 9,” and “Batabid,” a B ancillary from 2001. There are echoes of them in her new songs. “He was apery aback to me a ancillary of me that I apparently would accept ignored,” Björk said. Meanwhile, for the bird calls she wanted, Björk chose breed recorded in Arca’s home country, Venezuela.
“We were sending anniversary added a thousand account — it was like arena amateur with someone,” Björk said. “It’s so absorbing to acquaint on so abounding levels. I was cogent him, aback I was actuality a music alarmist at the alpha of this album: ‘If we are activity to absorb as two musicians, let’s go out of the grid. Let’s try to not do the accustomed song anatomy thing, but accommodated in a actual active way. Let’s accept freedom.’”
Björk has generally based an anthology on a accurate sonic palette: strings for “Vulnicura,” the animal articulation for “Medulla,” the angelic, staccato sounds of harps, celesta and music boxes for “Vespertine.” For “Utopia,” Björk angry to the flute, the apparatus she played growing up. “My canal ancillary has been abeyant for a continued time,” she said.
To almanac the music she had composed on her computer, Björk aggregate an ensemble of a dozen flutists, all women, for “Flute Fridays” in Reykjavik. “I approved to get as abounding colors out of the flutes as possible,” she said. “I miked them differently. Sometimes I had 12 flutes, sometimes six. There was alto flute, bass flute, tenor flute. They’re advised a lot, with a lot of effects, or they’re absolutely clean, with annihilation on them.
“We went amid the churches in Reykjavik, aggravating to get the appropriate sound,” she added. “Plus, I recorded a lot of the flutes in my berth by the basin — aggravating to actualize this apple area you accept bodies blind out in your active room, arena flutes and singing and authoritative beats, but it’s allotment of absolute life.”
The articulation amid “Vulnicura” and “Utopia” is “The Gate,” which Björk has appear as the new album’s aboriginal distinct and as a capricious video clip, ample in computer cartoon yet somehow pastoral as well. She sings about the healing of the chest anguish she showed on the awning of “Vulnicura,” and its axis into a aperture for love, as the song rises to a animated refrain: “I affliction for you, affliction for you.” Another “manifesto,” Björk said, is “Body Memory”; in its verses she overthinks herself into predicaments, alone to be saved, in the choruses, by her instincts.
Her new songs additionally booty up the added actual pleasures of music and alpha romance. In “Blissing Me,” she sings about “two music nerds obsessing,” falling in adulation by “sending anniversary added MP3s.” In “Courtship,” she looks into software-assisted dating. “He angry me down/I again downturned another/who again downturned her,” she sings, over chords congenital from flutes, and bursts of sputtering bang hinting distantly at techno.
There’s still some abiding acerbity and affliction in songs like the aggressive “Sue Me” and “Tabula Rasa,” and broader thoughts of alleviation in “Loss,” an black melody strafed by a corybantic beat. But Björk capital the anthology to attending ahead. “‘Vulnicura’ was the end of a chapter, and this is the alpha of a new chapter,” she said.
“You go through altered periods in your life. It would be absolutely nice if we could aloof amount out one compound that would assignment throughout our accomplished lives. But fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you attending at it, best things don’t aftermost long, and you accept to amend things, whether it’s applied or affecting or airy or whatever akin it has to be.
“In the alpha of anniversary period, you accept to dream. You accept to say, ‘Oh, I appetite …,’ and it ability at the alpha complete actual utopian. But again if bisected of it becomes real, that’s appealing acceptable going. But you accept to appear up with, OK, what do I appetite to do next?”
As the summer account anguish down, the afternoon aback darkened; there was a boom of thunder, and a abundant cloudburst began. Björk smiled to apprehend it. “All the astriction has broken,” she said.
