1 Arisen My Senses (4:59)
2 Blissing Me (5:05)
3 The Gate (6:33)
4 Utopia (4:42)
5 Body Memory (9:46)
6 Features Creatures (4:49)
7 Courtship (4:44)
8 Losss (6:51)
9 Sue Me (4:57)
10 Tabula Rasa (4:42)
11 Claimstaker (3:18)
12 Paradisia (1:44)
13 Saint (4:41)
14 Future Forever (4:47)

Titre inédit
Arpegggio

Utopia album Tournée Utopia 2018

Utopia

24 novembre 2017

9e album solo de Björk, la flûte est l’instrument majeur de cet opus. Les thèmes principaux sont la recherche de l’amour, l’urgence écologique, le féminisme et l’exploration de l’utopie.

It’s about that search (for utopia) – and about being in love. Spending time with a person you enjoy is when the dream becomes real. / Il s’agit de cette recherche (d’utopie) - et d’être amoureux. C’est en passant du temps avec une personne que l’on apprécie que le rêve devient réalité.
If we’re gonna survive the situation the world is in today, we’ve got to come up with a new plan. Especially now, this kind of dream is an emergency. / Si nous voulons survivre à la situation dans laquelle se trouve le monde aujourd’hui, nous devons trouver un nouveau plan. Surtout maintenant, ce genre de rêve est une urgence.

Björk

Très impliquée dans la conception, Arca est présente dès la genèse du projet, elle est clairement identifiée comme co-productrice. Par ailleurs, le titre Allow est dédié à leur étroite relation.

Infos

  • Durée : 71 min
  • Singles : 1er single : The Gate, 2e single : Blissing Me
  • Pochette "animée" : Utopia
  • L’album est construit autour des instruments à vents, principalement la flûte, mais il y a aussi de la harpe.
  • des chants d’oiseaux et de bruits de la nature servent de transition entre chaque titre. Des sons enregistrés avec Arca, notamment lors de leur voyage aux Caraïbes ou empruntés à l’un des albums préférés de Björk : Hekura enregistré par David Toop et Nestor Figueras et sorti en 1980.
  • Le chœur islandais Hamrahlíðarkórinn participe au projet.

Chronologie

Crédits

Paroles : Björk
Ecriture : Björk, Arca et Sarah Hopkins
Production : Björk, Arca et Rabit
Mixage : Heba Kadry Marta Salogni
Mastering : Mandy Parnell

  • L’ordre de la tracklist est différent sur la version vinyle :
Face A Face B Face C Face D
1 Arisen My Senses
2 Blissing Me
3 The Gate
4 Body Memory
5 Losss
6 Utopia
7 Saint
8 Courtship
9 Sue Me
10 Tabula Rasa
11 Claimstaker
12 Paradisia
13 Features Creatures
14 Future Forever

Pochette :
Direction artistique par Björk, James Merry et Hungry
Photographie par Jesse Kanda
Maquillage : Hungry
Masque : James Merry

Artwork : M/M Paris (Typographie et enluminures digitales)

Nominations

Nordic Music Prize Best Nordic Album nommé
Icelandic Music Awards Album of the year (Pop) nommé
Brit Awards International female solo artist nommé
Grammy Awards Best Alternative Music Album nommé

Björk à propos de l’album

Son prochain album serait un "album Tinder" autour de "la recherche du bonheur, et le fait d’être amoureux", ajoutant : "Passer du temps avec une personne que l’on aime, c’est quand le rêve devient réalité."

Dazed

The whole album is a little bit about air, because we decided to have synths that have a lot of air in them, and we have flutes that sound synthy, so there’s that sort of crossover there.

Nowness

“This album, for me, is kind of like a soundtrack to that place that we can all move to after Trump. I think I wanted to create a…utopia [where] you would escape and go to an island and the people would be naked and they’d be playing flutes and it would have birds and flowers that you’d never seen. It would be this kind of paradise.”

The Big Issue

i think the idea of the album was never to fanatically pollyanna forth some ideal perfection but rather a speculation of what our fantasies are and what the reality is and where can they help each other. have courage in going for your first choice and standing by it. i feel in this time of trump it is a necessity to have a plan, a manifesto, an alternative. it’s a question of life and death for our species. as a musician i feel i can suggest the musical poetic angle which is that after tragedies one has to invent a new world, knit it or embroider, make it up. it’s not gonna be given to you because you deserve it, it doesn’t work that way. you have to imagine something that doesn’t exist and dig a cave into the future and demand space. it’s a territorial hope affair. at the time, that digging is utopian but in the future it will become your reality.

W Magazine - Octobre 2017

Because the subject matter was utopia, I wanted to feel like you’ve come to this island and there are all these sounds and birds and plants that you’ve never seen or heard before.

NPR - Novembre 2017

I think the severity of the last album made me very excited about everything that was light and fluffy and in the wind, so that became definitely one of the major sonic inspirations for this album : I started to write flute arrangements, and I got together like 12 girls in Iceland to play the flutes.

NPR - Novembre 2017

I wanted to just be free and become a musician again, and have my voice, instead of it lying on the ground, my melodies to be more like constellations in the cloud.

NPR - Novembre 2017

I did a little falsetto experiment on Utopia ; more songs than usual are now sung like that, which is kind of hilarious ! It was almost like a continuity of "Cocoon," an old song of mine, where I was trying as a singer to get underneath the skin and break the barrier between the singer and the listener. I discovered that the sonic contrast on this album, the point where the fantasy and the real meet is extreme. I guess that’s what the title Utopia is about. I like that the word has luggage. It is about your fantasy but also about how you mix reality into it, and how you do that is really descriptive of what kind of person you are. I’m curious about the gap between the two.

the Talks - Novembre 2017

‘Utopia’ celebrates precisely those elements that push her further into the light—friendship, love and hope. “It’s the polar opposites of ‘Vulnicura,’ emotionally and musically,” Björk explains. “I‘ve done the saddest music I‘ve made in my life, and I felt, as musicians, we could do so much more. It became almost like a joke to do the opposite.”
“‘Vulnicura’ was very heavy, and the melodies were sad, so they didn’t move a lot of the ground. On ‘Utopia’ I kind of gravitated towards everything that was light and happy, because I had overdosed on seriousness,” Björk explains with a laugh. “Flutes are probably the lightest musical instruments. They are fluffy—they‘re wind, and flow.”
“If it were just happy songs, I would have called the album ‘Paradise’ or something,” she chuckles. “Yes, there are moments that are very euphoric and happy, but then there is also—like in all sci-fi films and stories that humans have made about the perfect place—that moment when two thirds into the story, the tail of a dinosaur knocks on your door and you have to deal with it.”

Reykjavik Grapevine

Chroniques

The result is exceptionally beautiful. Utopia is overwhelming, lush and gorgeous, with harps and flutes and real-life bird calls, a magic forest of constantly changing sound.

The Guardian

The new album is another classic from the good lady and her current crew of music makers. It takes in everything from piano and strings to drum machines, beats, bleeps, harps, flutes and samples. The perfect example of how future music can be made by always pushing the boundaries but never forgetting the song. It’s another organic and mesmerizing album that unfolds with repeated plays. Simply outstanding - Bjork always is.

Rough trade

The latest iteration of Björk’s career-long fascination with how nature and technology can interact. (...) Utopia has gone from everything being monasteries, to feminist islands, to socialism, to ‘Peach Blossom Spring’.

The New York Times

« Si vous y prêtez une oreille attentive, cet album vous emportera au paradis »

The Skinny

« Avec Utopia, l’Islandaise plonge Amour et Écologie dans un grand bain de flûtes. »

Tribune de Genève

On est littéralement aspiré dans l’univers unique de Björk.

Les Inrocks

Une splendeur immersive qui enchante par sa radicalité.

Libération

Une lettre d’amour adressée à l’optimisme

New York Times

Un album organique, féministe pro-sexe, bien plus positif que le plombant Vulnicura

Tsugi

La vie qui bat dans cette sonosphère donne sérieusement envie de s’y immerger, s’y perdre et ne plus en revenir.

lapresse.ca

Une écoute attentive d’une œuvre aussi personnelle, exigeante et courageuse s’avère, à ceux qui voudront bien s’y abandonner, lumineuse.

Télérama

Inclassable et difficile à appréhender, souvent, mais toujours très attendue, Björk sort Utopia, disque étrange mais passionnant de renaissance.

Francetvinfo

On sent que la générosité est centrale dans cet album, dont la musique est parfois offensive : Björk dessine des parallèles entre son évolution personnelle et un désir de renverser / changer le système.

The Fader

Utopia est l’interaction entre l’art, le vécu et l’expérimentation, et c’est absolument fascinant.

NME

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