Biophilia
| Bjork
Biophilia
Biophilia is the seventh studio album by Icelandic singer Bjork. It was released on 5 October 2011, by One Little Indian Records and distributed by Nonesuch Records in North America and by Universal Music Group in the rest of the world. Bjork composed it as a concept album during the 2008 2011 Icelandic financial crisis, exploring the links between nature, music and technology. Billed as the first "app album", Biophilia is a multimedia project released alongside a series of apps linking the album's themes to musicology concepts. It was followed by a series of educational workshops in four continents. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Björk's eighth full-length release may be her most ambitious yet. The nature-themed Biophilia is supported with iPad apps, a series of live shows, and a forthcoming documentary, but sometimes the cross-platform zeal outstrips the songwriting.
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The Guardian
Heralded as the future of music, Björk's album/app is a whirl of innovation – and the music's beautiful.
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Consequence of Sound
Though Biophilia is hardly easy listening, even by Björk’s challenging, outlandish standards, there’s little doubting it’ll stand as one of the more rewarding albums of her storied career.
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Rolling Stone
Biophilia was partly created on an iPad and is being released as a set of apps. But in the songs, human desires and foibles echo natural phenomena: the fatal passion in “Virus,” the new worlds born in “Cosmogony.” And when Bjork’s supernatural voice soars in “Thunderbolt” – “Craving miracles” – soul easily trumps software.
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NME
Look past the techno wizardry, the grand designs and the brainy philosophy to find an album that's intimate, playful and beautiful.
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A.V. Club Music
As minimally executed as it is maximally conceived, Biophilia doesn’t sculpt emptiness; it swims in it. By the disc’s end—and in spite of frequent flashes of celestial, awe-dropping grace—all that space accumulates to form an unfocused, almost suffocating absence of song. Maybe the apps would help.
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Slant Magazine
As much as the last four or so tracks do to redeem what is too often a failed and overly formal experiment in hyper-theoretical songcraft, the insoluble problem of Biophilia is that Björk has chosen to inflate what is ultimately one of her least essential musical statements to such spectacular proportions. It’s almost guaranteed to underwhelm.
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Sputnik Music
Far better than anybody had any right to expect.
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BBC Music
An amazing, inventive and wholly unique eighth album from an artist without peer.
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The Seattle Times
“Biophilia” comes off self-indulgent, like concentrated doses of things we either know very well, or don’t care about.
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Clash Music
An absolutely remarkable artist, for whom the terms ‘genius’ and ‘unique’ are not journalistic hyperbole but simple fact, Björk is taking music to a place where we should all gladly follow.
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Pretty Much Amazing
Every track is a rhizome teeming with poetry and waves of sound that connect back to a singular theme — nature and music are really one in the same.
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The Reykjavik Grapevine
Björk has made a piece of music about science, the cosmos, and human life that has etched a carving on my mental landscape that many local musicians, for all their nice tunes and ditties, will NEVER get anywhere close to repeating.
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The Quietus
Say you don't feel like forking out 400-odd quid on an iPad and another £13.41 on all the apps, plus flights to Reyjavik or New York to catch the next residency, the good news is that everything you need is in just Biophilia the album.
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Chicago Tribune
That quality – the playfulness central to a career spent gleefully overturning expectations – is what’s missing on much of “Biophilia.”
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The Independent
Björk is undoubtedly one of the more questing spirits working in music today; but with Biophilia, that quest seems to have led her too far away from her core specialism of music.
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Soundblab
Biophilia is exciting listening. It takes a lot to make a piece of music that is new and fresh and inspiring, and although there are obviously elements that are found elsewhere, the method and manner Bjork has put them together in is amazing.
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All Music
Biophilia is easily her most ambitious project as a whole, but its music is more about completion than competition, even against herself. Educational and emotional in a uniquely approachable way, these songs are a lovely part of a bigger picture.
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Hotpress
Lush, but lifeless concert movie.
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NZ Herald
Beyond the technology and gimmicks, the true beauty of Biophilia is simply the songs themselves.
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L.A. Times
The sound is uniquely hers, but impressive as it is, it may have lost the ability to surprise.
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Drowned in Sound
Biophilia the album is intricate, delicate, demanding you pay attention.
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Media Roots
Biophilia points to the crystallisation of her artistry, whilst maintaining her unique integrity. We bear witness to an adventurous and seasoned artist throwing down.
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Treble Zine
Given the elaborate presentation designed around Biophilia, it is to a certain extent intended to be experienced on numerous levels – aurally, visually and interactively.
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Pon De Way Way Way
Its impossible to argue that Biophilia is without its flaws – because you shouldn’t have to supplement the original work with additional material. But, in this case, I think anyone who doesn’t delve past that somewhat lacklustre first offering is missing out. I brought the live set on a whim and I’m so glad I did because I now feel I can enjoy Biophilia instead of just admiring it.
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Under the Radar
Bjork is not merely ahead of other musicians, she is in orbit thousands of miles above them, elliptical and benign, exerting an influence that science cannot explain away. We need Bjork, if only to remind us that, like space, the human imagination is boundless. 4/5 stars.
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NPR Music
The heart of Biophilia is, of course, Björk's iconic, haunting voice. Vocal melodies unfurl more like transcendent devotionals than typical verses, and become even more stirring when accompanied by a chorus of voices that could fill a cathedral.
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L.A. Music Blog
This is the sound of a modern music great rediscovering her mojo.
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The Crimson
That lyrical depth and imagination, accompanied by some instrumental elaboration, still make “Biophilia” an enchanting, self-possessed work. But due to the limited dimensions in which its permutations unravel, the instrumentation falls short: Björk’s cosmic subject matter chafes against its tight frame, and it in turn seems feeble next to her lyrics’ scope.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
https://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/bj%C3%B6rk-biophilia
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SPIN
Björk triumphs over her universe of sonic exercises on Biophilia, but she’s yet to master the more slippery nature of demystification.
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Digital Spy
Biophilia shows that no matter how you record, package, or market it, there will always be a place for inventive, emotional music that is unafraid to push boundaries and rip your soul to shreds.
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Prefix Mag
The music that makes up Biophilia is bracingly different from what Björk’s put out before, even its predecessor, 2007’s Volta. This album is more minimal, more intimate, its sound is more organic and almost entirely devoid of the mechanical, glittering electronic moments that Björk’s music has favored in the past.
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The Cambridge Student
If you take the album on its own, there's a wealth of gorgeous, audacious music to be savoured. Perhaps I'm being an unimaginative traditionalist, but I think that's far more exciting.
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The Mercury News
Bjork channels tech’s beating heart on ‘Biophilia’.
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Scene Point Blank
It may be a little too over-the-top, and it can be easy to get lost in all of the flair and spackle that comes along with it, but if you focus and just listen to the music, you'll find this is one of the more rewarding albums of her career.
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Muzic Dizcovery
It's difficult to call Biophilia's little faults anything more than blemishes in light of everything else it does so right. This album will enchant and mezmerize. More importantly, it's yet another incredibly excecuted piece of music that will show the world why Bjork deserves all the hyperbolic claim she recieves.
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2 Up Top
Biophilia carves out brave new territory for an artist who's been colonising the fringes of music all her career, fragile and demanding, at times uncomfortable but always fascinating. Whatever happens with the technology and wherever the arguments over music, art and commerce drag themselves to next, it's these songs that are the triumph here.
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Telegraph
Björk's voice is prayer-full of human yearning in Biophilia.
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Music Factory Number One
Her latest venture Biophilia once again tries to outdo her previous work, released as an album accompanied for the first time with accompanying iPad and iPhone apps. Elaborate and innovative, it is a move that is quite extraordinarily Björk, requiring the services of Apple, National Geographic and David Attenborough to make happen.
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Beats Per Minute
Just as carbon gives rise to a crystal or an entire galaxy, Björk’s creativity generates all these strands of DNA, all of which has permeated subsequent generations and influenced our lives as music listeners in myriad ways. Biophilia is Björk, the sum total, and this album is her continued claim to the throne as the monarch of avant-pop.
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Luddite Stereo
Biophilia is pristinely recorded and thematically woven together down to the smallest detail.
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2020k
Bjork has definitely risked all on every album she’s released thus far, but she keeps defying the odds and unleashing outstanding new material from album, upon album, upon album, upon album.
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Scientific American
Biophilia is a marriage of the rational and the emotional, of modern technology and art, and of music and innovation that works extremely well.
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The Manc Review
Like an erratic star, Biophilia travels independently through the universe, shinning in all it’s celestial wonder.
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Uncut
You may not be whistling these songs or dancing to them, but Biophilia’s unsettling visions are compelling art.
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FACT Magazine
Ultimately, the apps are just the same as any deluxe, bonus-feature packed boxset edition of an album, albeit a much more forward-thinking, better conceived version. It’s cool, but it would be criminal to think that an app is the crux of what Biophilia is about. To do so would be overlooking the fact that this record might just prove to be one of the career highlights of an artist who’s already had an astonishingly consistent career.
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Our Vinyl
Biophilia expands her fascination with nature into a full-blown scientific musical. It’s her most ambitious work to date and ranges from songs about biology, astronomy and geology to creation theory. All of which relates back her emotions and how they can be parallels for these subjects.
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Dusted Magazine
At this point, it's nice when a Bjork song is content to be music and nothing else. Little here is new, exactly, but nothing's easily dismissed, either.
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No Ripcord
Despite some flaws in its execution, Biophilia does succeed in pushing beyond the already established album-singles-videos model, and the creation of a digital experience to compliment the music feels like a natural progression in the way that music is packaged and consumed. Ever the trailblazer and the artist’s artist, Björk’s singular ambition may well have provided a glimpse of the future.
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Paste Magazine
Biophilia doesn’t represent today or tomorrow; it doesn’t reflect the edges of the norm in an expansive mirror that explores their oft-ignored details. It’s from somewhere else. It is, truly, of the else. Exactly what that means I’m not sure, but it sure is fun to think about. I guess that’s probably the best assessment I could give Biophilia. More than anything else, it makes you think.
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Scott Snibbe
This is like the birth of cinema. It’s an extremely exciting moment for musicians, for artists, and I think this project is a nice step towards fully leveraging the medium with one of the world’s great artists to see what you can pull off when you get one of the world’s greatest musicians and some of the world’s top developers in interactivity to work together.
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Iceland Review
Honestly, at the beginning I didn’t like it too much, but Biophilia really grew on me. Furthermore, I love that Björk is using this project to teach children science in a visual, exciting way.
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Music Banter
Biophilia is full of nothing but hacked-filler. It’s lazy, and there’s nothing memorable about it.
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WGMU Radio
Bjork’s all-important solipsistic nature seems to have diminished and taken with it her distinguished ear and ability to filter her myriad ideas.
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Philly
Biophilia would be worth bothering with if the otherworldly music wasn’t any good. Thankfully it is. And while the album rarely kicks into high energy club mode - the drum n’ bass style kinetic coda of “Crystalline” is about it - much of it is eerily beautiful and arranged in a manner spare, uncluttered manner that invites remixers to have their way with it.
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D É N O U E M E N T S
Biophilia and its satisfying success can be taken in to account as a progression of an artist who has pushed boundaries and limits of creativity all these years. She was left with nothing to work on, everything has been said, written and used in this planet, so she squared it of by making her own instruments, deducting the cosmos to human experience and making genius of a record. I say, brilliant.
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The AU Review
I'm giving this album a 10/10 - not because I enjoy it 100% now, but because I know I will in the future. At which point I might regret giving it anything lower.
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Stuff Review
Putting any discussion on excessive commercialization to the side, this is one of the most exciting and ground breaking music related productions we’ve seen.
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