When Bjork Met Attenborough

This was a documentary on Channel 4 this evening which followed Bjork developing her latest musical project, 'Biophilla', which aimed to harness the sounds of the natural world. She met with David Attenborough to see how sounds have shaped the natural world; from the evolution to birds to the sounds of the ocean. I found it interesting that Attenborough made an observation that the human larynx is far bigger than what is simply required for speech; he went on to suggest that singing, shouting or other vocalisations came long before speaking.

They also discussed the link music and the natural world has with mathematics. Whilst looking at some quartz, Bjork explained how she had used the structure of crystals as the inspiration for her song 'Crystalline'; their structure gave rise to the time signatures she used; 17/8 for the verses and 4/4 for chorus to create a contrast between the irregular 17/8 time and the more structured 4/4 time.

Bjork wanted to find a way to bring the universe's natural forces onto music. In 'Solstice', she uses a rotary, pendulum harp to symbolise the rotation of the earth, while the swing of the pendulum uses gravity to create the bass line; the instrument is a based on the Foucault pendulum.

She explained how she thinks of chords being like the earth's tectonic plates and how a slight change in pressure can move the plates together, apart or they slide against each other. She also thinks of lightning as being like arpeggios. In the song 'Thunderbolt', Bjork used a Tesla coil to play the arpeggio bass line to create the link between the visual lightning and the audible thunder.

Bjork wanted to find a way to use technology to make playing music more accessible. Instead of releasing an album on CD, she went on to create an interactive app where you could not only listen to the songs but interact with them; the app uses the touch-screen to change the shape of the music. The programme went on to show how these apps are used in music education in schools, making music education less formal and more accessible.

Although the film finished somewhat abruptly, I found Bjork's thought process and approach to composition fascinating.