Bjork: with an experimental new vocal album, one of pop music's great explorers continues to venture into uncharted waters. Here, she talks living on the edge with a fellow avatar of the avant-garde

Interview, Nov, 2004 by Laurie Anderson

LA: Oh, yeah. Hot Latin blood does not come to mind when I think of Iceland.

B: No. [laughs]

LA: People in Iceland were also talking pretty casually about elves. They would just drop them into the conversation, and they're quite sure they exist. You know those little houses they build in Hong Kong for the elves? Have you ever seen those?

B: I've heard about them. They wanted to get a woman from Iceland who is a specialist to go over there and help with them. I heard rumors about it, but I didn't see pictures or anything. So they built the houses?

LA: Well, they built a tiny one because they don't have a lot of room. I heard that when they build a new high-rise and displace the elves, they need to have a small house for them. So they attach a little one, the size of a dog house maybe, next to the door to the high-rise for them to live in.

B: [laughs] Wow!

LA: It's very hospitable, no?

B: Yeah! It's funny. So what is this project you are doing in Japan--what is it, the Expo?

LA: Yeah, World Expo [2005]. I'm making a film and doing a long piece of music that people will listen to as they walk through the gardens. There will be installations all along the way to look at. I'm doing all these things outside because I've gotten too claustrophobic being inside with computers. That was another question I had for you: Did you do a lot of laptop stuff on Medulla? Once you get the music done, do you like to sit around and edit it?

B: Yeah. I was almost religious about it on the last album, Vespertine [2001]. The vocals sound like I was whispering and trying to have a sound that would be the same coming out from tiny speakers as big ones. Medulla is really different in the sounds, but with all the vocals, I wanted them to be quite bloody and meaty. But we actually ended up recording a lot on a laptop.

LA: Why not? That's so great and handy.

B: Yeah. And we traveled to so many of the singers' houses and just set it up. You can just be chatting while you're working. It was fun. I really feel like I've touched on something. Since I gave the record to the publishers, I keep finding new CDs of sounds that I never knew about, like yodeling.

LA: Oh, yodeling. Yes, of course. [Bjork laughs] So, would you do another record with just voices? I love the little things you've put on Medulla, with synths and stuff--it was really great that you didn't do that very much. And what was that bass line? That was such a great one on "Who Is It?" It just links through like another character, but it sounds like a vocal. It's really amazing.

B: It is a mix between two things. There was a baritone called Gregory Purnhagen. I think he sang with Philip Glass and Meredith Monk, and he was really precise! It was exciting to work with someone so professional. He did the drone almost like, you know--what do you call the people in the Himalayas? The monks! So he did that noise, and then we put it down an octave. Then there was Mike Patton, whose voice is a roar. He's got many foot pedals when he sings. He would do some of this bass line, too, where he would actually put it in some sort of harmonizer.