bjork.com GH&FT special : Jóga

QUOTE	Interview by David Hemingway. Reprinted by kind permission of Record Collector.
I think that songs is several things. At the time, I was going to move to London for a couple of months to record an album. I ended up doing two records and touring the world. I'd never been so long away from Iceland, so when I started preparing for Homogenic, it was very obviously supposed to be a love album to Iceland nature. I'd learned enough about studios and beats to make modern Icelandic pop music. It's isn't Icelandic music trying to be English or American. I was doing a lot of experimenting with beats trying to make them sound volcanic. With this song, I really had a sort of National Anthem in mind. Not the National Anthem but certain classic Icelandic songs - very romantic, very proud. All the puffin stories are rubbish, though.

REVIEW	director-file.com
The introduction to Björk's third album, Homogenic, is the video for “Jòga.” Björk and Gondry conjure up another new world: one created from the topography of Björk's home, Iceland. The song is a soothing cascade of strings and blips, with Björk pleading, "Emotional landscapes / They puzzle me." For the video, Gondry flew around Iceland taking hundreds of still shots. By morphing these stills, a la “Like A Rolling Stone”, the post effects team developed a marvelous, fluctuating world. Various topographic features change and shift as the video transports you across the landscape. The music soon breaks apart into rough agates and rivers of lava from beneath the earth's surface. But change is continuous: the earth's plates reconnect the rhythm with the beat, and Björk's warm voice coats the surfaces. The imagery in “Jòga” is simple yet astounding. The video - in tribute to Iceland and Jóga herself (a friend of the singer) - studies the beauty of the landscape as a changing environment. This theme runs parallel to Björk’s examination of “emotional landscapes.” Perhaps in a “state of emergency,” Björk seeks comfort likewise with nature and with her friend Jòga.

QUOTE	Marcus Dravs in Musician, december 1997
She wrote the song 'Joga' for a friend of hers, and she explained that particular character to me. First of all, she set out an overall picture, like whether it's a song of no compromise or whether it's about a character who's very enthusiastic and helpful; she'd say we should do heartbeats or whatever. I then came up with a rhythm that seemed to fit that description of a personality, and she said, 'Oh, the distortion is a bit too abstract; it should be more punchy.' We did other hits, maybe start again, but those first noises wouldn't necessarily be thrown away. Then Mark had a go with it. He took 99 percent of what I did and came up with some noises, which gave me new ideas and I'd have another go.

PICS	video stills


PICS	On the film set - photos by Francois Nemeta