Björk says new album Utopia represents a “DIY fortress” away from Trump
The flute-heavy new record is due later this month.
Björk has described the world she tried to create through the music on her new album Utopia. The album, Björk's ninth, is out later this month and the Icelandic artist spoke to The Observer about what utopia means to her, saying she envisages it as an island where women can live far away from that which suppresses them, including Donald Trump.
She says the idea for a fictional island was inspired by the use of flute on the record. This led her to listening to flute music “from South America, Amazon tribes, and Africa, and Indonesia, and China, and Icelandic mythology.” A common thread in this music, she said, was tales of women escaping society and leaving with their children to a new place. Björk wanted to create a similar story, but without the bits from her research where "the guys come and chop everyone’s heads off."
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Among the men she wanted to cut out of her album was Trump. “He got elected when I was two years into the album,” she said, “and I felt like, O.K., it’s really important now to be intentional. If you feel this world is not heading the right way, you have to be DIY and make a little fortress, over here to the left.”
Björk's Utopia/i> is due on November 24.
