Björk

Bjork Gudmundsdottir was born in Reykjavik, Iceland on 21 October 1965. She grew up in a communal family grounded in indigenous Icelandic folk and literary culture that would help feed her creativity. She also studied classical music and she was a child performer at the age of 11 when her version of Tina Charles' I Love To Love was played on local radio. This led to a self titled album of covers with many of Iceland's top musicians. The elfin child prodigy then graduated to her first band, Exodus and in 1981, aged 14 she formed another, Tappi Tikarrass which translated as the charming local phrase, Cork The Bitch's Arse. Bjork also worked with Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman and Youth. Several more musical experiments followed, including guesting for a free form jazz rock duo, Stifgrim and then playing synthesizer in a covers band, Cactus. A Banshees style outfit, Kukl followed before Bjork teamed up with Bragi Olafsson, Thor Eldton (the father of her son, Sindri) and Einar Mellax to form Iceland's most famous musical export, The Sugarcubes. Their debut single on One Little Indian Records, Birthday, was typical of the band's mixture of lolloping basslines, ethereal production and Bjork's inimitable vocals.



The Sugarcubes debut album, Life's Too Good entered the UK Top 20 in Spring 1988. It was an intoxicating blend of jazzy instrumentation, indie stylings and wilful weirdness. In 1992 after a critically acclaimed, dance orientated album, Stick, featuring the hit single, Hit, the band split, at the height of their fame. It was a short, strange trip. But not as strange as Bjork's ascent to international solo stardom.



Following the breakup of the group, Björk moved to London to pursue a solo career. The previous year, she had sung on 808 State's Ooops, which sparked her interest in club and house music. Björk struck up a working relationship with former Soul II Soul producer Nellee Hooper. The first result of their partnership was Human Behaviour, which was released in June of 1993. Human Behaviour became a Top 40 hit in the U.K., setting the stage for the full-length album, Debut. Crammed with off-the-wall Bjork oddities and pulsing house music the album was lauded by the critics, debuting at No3 on the UK charts and nominated for a Mercury Music Prize. Throughout 1993, Björk had hit U.K. singles - including enus as a Boy, and Big Time Sensuality.A soundtrack collaboration, Play Dead, together with David Arnold featured in the movie, Young Americans.



The album's success made Bjork a bonafide celebrity. She wrote the title track to Madonna's Bedtime Stories album and appeared at the 1993 Brit awards performing with PJ Harvey. In 1995, Bjork released the Post album which saw her working with everyone from Tricky and Skunk Anansie to the Brodsky Quartet and Evelyn Glennie. The album veered from the hard techno beats of Army Of Me, to the shimmering Hyperballad and the 40's revival number It's So Quiet. The latter provided the singer with her biggest UK hit, reaching No. 4 in December. Veering from hushed reverence to shouty rants, the song was characteristic of the album's more fragmented nature, a challenging listen but proof that our elf-like heroine wasn't content to rest on her laurels.



The following year saw Bjork become tabloid fodder after her highly publicised relationship with drum and bass maestro Goldie and her attack on a reporter at Bangkok airport in February 1996. Bjork says she attacked after the reporter tried interviewing her son, Sindri. "My motherly instincts just took over," said the singer. In September an obsessed fan from Florida sent a letter bomb to the singer and eventually shot himself. Luckily neighbours contacted police after smelling his decomposed body and the bomb was averted.



Unsurprisingly, the stresses and strains of stardom were addressed on Bjork's next album, 1997's Homogenic. - a return to more electronica but more downbeat than dancefloor. The album spawned two eye-popping, Michel Gondry-directed videos for Joga and Bachelorette. Following a remix album of all the songs on Post, entitled Telegram in 1997, Bjork turned her focus to acting. Her part as Selma in Lars Von Trier's Dancer In The Dark won the Best Actress award at the 2000 Cannes film festival. The challenging soundtrack, Selma Songs, was written by Björk with help from composer Vincent Mendoza and was very different to her studio albums, reflecting the light, shade and emotional extremes of her character.



2001's Vespertine album was by contrast a haven of celestial calm. A meditative rhapsody to personal contentment, imagination and dreams with spectral choirs, angelic harps and pulsuing electronica courtesy of laptop wizards Matmos. With Bjork's uncharacteriscally restrained vocals, the album weaved a spiritual spell with the hit singles The Hidden Place and Pagan Poetry.



Apart from a greatest hits album in 2002, Bjork's three year silence has now been broken with a new album, her sixth, Medulla. Again, Bjork plays against type (if that were possible) with a largely acapella album. The album's title is latin for "marrow" and perhaps represents the bare bones of Bjork's journey so far. Assisted by a host of fringe players including Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis (yes, her!) and Japanese Acapella singer Dokaka, Robert Wyatt, a 20-piece male voice choir and The Roots' Rahzel, the album revolves around the essence of love, sex, regret and nature. Like her previous work, the album contains more pioneering and challenging twists than most musicians can ever dream of. In their element of surprise and originality, Bjork's records restore your faith in music, even with that dead swan around her neck.