Marius De Vries

The working title for a long time was Domestica. It was all to do with Björk wanting to make a record as a reaction to the wanderings and the pain she experienced making Dancer In The Dark, and how much that had taken out of her, to make a record about the place you come back to after you’ve wandered. The chamber-music dimensions and intimacy of Vespertine are all very much driven by that overriding aesthetic of being homely and comfortable.

Björk describes what she wants in terms of sounds in a language that to an observer might appear surreal or even nonsensical. But Björk and I have had a connection for a long time, and the people she chooses to work with are often selected with an eye on this. I remember from our very early sessions how she described a sound by saying ’You know when you get a tube of toothpaste and you squeeze it and you watch the toothpaste coming out the end of the tube ? You need to have it sounding more like that !’, and on another occasion she said ’Hold a pineapple in your hand and look at the fluffy bit at the top, well it needs to sound more like that !’ They tend to be very poetic descriptions of what she wants to hear, and you either get it or you don’t.

www.soundonsound.com, November 2001