Bjork's ‘Biophilia’ world tour sets the bar high

Sheer imagination, concept and left field creativity create a sensory overload that is just magnificent

As someone with a keen interest in the world and Cosmology, Bjork's new album 'Biophilia' caught my eye. I was curios why my friend (who is her PA) was sending her beautiful ink drawings of vertebrae sections from the internet recently, but it all makes sense now.

The biophilia hypothesis suggests that human beings have an innate affinity with the natural world – plants, animals or even the weather and this concept album focuses on nature with songs inspired by such themes as DNA, tectonic plates and crystals.

Bjork has of course gone one step further than just an album and has invented totally new instruments for the world tour. The concert’s opening song in Manchester 'Thunderbolt' premiered two "Tesla Coils" – electrical columns that shoot out small bolts of lightning to generate musical notes followed by four “gravity harps” made from 10ft (3m) pendulums that plucked strings as they swung back and forth during a song about gravity. A “sharpsichord”, a large cylinder with protruding pins played a harpsichord as they were turned, and a “gameleste”, a kind of piano that had been adapted so glockenspiel-style bronze bars were struck as notes were played. Genuis. A further twist to the Biophilla set includes using Sir David Attenborough as a voice over. He was one of Bjork's main sources of inspiration for the album and as a lover of sampling and re-mixes this makes me swoon.

This world tour is surely a protype for the future with an album, an app to go with each of the 10 songs, intruments played via an ipad, an eductaion project and a documentary all associated with it. The Biophilia set is also a sensory overload, a multi-media experience where music, technology and nature have been combined with sheer left field imagination and creativity and i love it.

by Leonie. Follow on Twitter
David Attenborough's introduction to the Biophilia app - here
Bjork's website here