Björk Invites You To Her 'Utopia'

Björk's last album, Vulnicura, felt heavy. A chronicle of her her separation from longtime partner Matthew Barney, its sounds had a suffocating menace, like when your breath is sucked from your lungs as you race down the highest hill of a roller coaster.

A few years later, on the new album Utopia, it's as if Björk found enough peace amidst the chaos to take in a lungful of air, and breathed it back out into the world as music. Sometimes that breath is literal, passing through the instruments of the 12-woman flute orchestra she assembled. Other times it exists as imagined space, as when co-producer Arca manipulates waveforms to conjure the sound of birds from another world. Having long explored the organic relationship between nature and technology in her music, Björk is using it on this release to present her vision of a better future.

In a conversation with NPR's Rachel Martin, Bjork unpacks how explores ideas of paradise through sound, its relevance to the current conversation around sexual harrasment and why singing while walking is some of the best vocal training you can get. Hear the radio version at the audio