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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Chal Ravens

‘I got really grounded and loved it’: how grief, going home and gabber built Björk’s new album

‘A fountain of blood in the shape of a girl’ … Björk.
‘A fountain of blood in the shape of a girl’ … Björk. Photograph: Vidar Logi

If, in the winter of 2021, you had been wandering through downtown Reykjavík, you might have registered the thud-thud-thud-thud of a lockdown house party. Squeezing her “Christmas bubble” of friends into her living room, Iceland’s most famous citizen was throwing another of her “crazy DJ nights, where 20 people could come and I always ended up DJing just gabber”.

According to Björk, the nails-hard 90s Dutch techno style is the perfect soundtrack to Covid life. “There’s always a BPM in our bodies, you know? And I think through Covid we were all pretty lazy, just sitting home reading books, so when we got drunk or partied it was like we went a little bit mental, then we just fell asleep before midnight. Slow energy, but then it goes double.” And that, she realised, is “a little bit gabber”.

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