Seventy-five minutes ago, in the room next door, I plugged earphones into a laptop and listened to Utopia all the way through. She has been working on this album for two and a half years. Now it’s all done, she’s marshalling her multitudinous ideas – musical, conceptual, conscious, subconscious – trying to organise everything into a single quotable notion. “Eighty per cent of my music is me sitting by my laptop, editing. Her music involves her exploring small triggers, connecting “emotional coordinates” matching technical difficulties with musical aims processing the results of time spent with musicians, editors, producers arranging, recording, editing, mixing. For a long time, as is her wont, she was creating it without a huge idea, just working. Though we’re trying to connect, it feels like I’m standing on one side of a rushing river and she’s on the other, semaphoring her thoughts across at me.ījörk has only recently worked out what Utopia might mean.

Björk folds herself in and out of her olde worlde chair, her body language opening and shutting according to how comfortable she is with the conversation.Īt the moment, the conversation concerns her new album, Utopia. This building was once the home of an important politician, and the rooms are small and decorated like a granny’s house: ornaments in glass display cases, Victorian side tables, antimacassars on curly-armed sofas. We are upstairs above a cafe in Reykjavik, Iceland. Utopia is overwhelming, lush and gorgeous, with harps and flutes and real-life bird calls, a magic forest of sound Every so often she takes her gum out and puts it on her saucer then picks it up absent-mindedly and chews it again. There is kohl smudged under her eyes, and she’s drinking tea and chewing gum. But really, she’s an artist in disguise, often literally (at the moment, she favours delicate feather or filigree head dresses).Today, despite her hangover, she looks great, in a white dress with storm trooper shoulder-stitching, black tights, black platform shoes. She’s worked in music for more than 30 years, so she’s called a pop star.

Even off-duty, Björk is always full-Björk: interested in the off-beat and experimental.

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