Bjork: The Billboard Cover Story | originally a 3D movie, now apps & soon to be a stage show - love
For those who don't own Apple's tablet computer, "Biophilia" will exist as a gargantuan live show that features one-of-a-kind instruments, an educational program that teaches abstract musicology to kids, a 90-minute documentary that captures the making of the project and a relaunched website-the design mirrors the experience of the apps. "Biophilia" will also be released on CD through Nonesuch/One Little Indian, and first single "Crystalline" has be pushed to radio before the premiere of its breathtaking music video.
New Bjork Single, 'Crystalline,' Leaks Online: Listen
At the center of it all, of course, is Björk, whose cavernous, emotionally stirring follow-up to 2007's "Volta" is her most immediate album since 2001's "Vespertine." "This project is led first and foremost by Björk's music," says Michele Anthony, Björk's co-manager with Derek Birkett and former president of Sony Music. "The apps and the live show are just different mediums of expressing the heart of the project."
THE ART OF NOISEBefore "Biophilia" came to fruition, Björk was working on new music in a Puerto Rico beach house with engineer Damian Taylor, writing songs on pre-iPad touch-screens and forging new sounds with organ pipes that they had bought on eBay. After an extensive 18-month tour for "Volta," which included 10 U.S. shows that grossed a combined $3.5 million (according to Billboard Boxscore), Björk was ready to experiment. "We were making pendulums with elastics, rope, magnets and buckets . . . we were building something from the ground up," she says.
Bjork's 'Crystalline' Video: Michel Gondry Offers an Inside Look
The album was originally conceived as a 3-D movie to be helmed by longtime collaborator Michel Gondry, but around the same time the director bowed out to finish "The Green Hornet" last year, Björk had become fascinated with the capabilities of the recently released iPad. Björk reached out to a collection of her favorite app developers through email and presented them with a unique financial opportunity: Without a major label attached to her next project, the apps would be self-funded and the developers would reap the majority of the revenue.


