“Spreading Utopia into fully surround speakers... 27 moving curtains... bespoke instruments: an aluphone, a circular flute and a reverb chamber... in a personal chapel”: Take cover, it’s Bjork’s new book

Bjork has announced she has a new book coming out. And as you’d expect, it’s different. In fact, it sounds as far removed from yer’ bog-standard ten-a-penny rock memoir as you’re likely to get.

Essentially it seems to be a companion to her five year long Corncopia tour, which has been going on and off since before Covid. Cornucopia: The Book is out on November 15 and contains over 300 images from the tour by acclaimed photographer Santiago Felipe.

Bjork explained more in an Instagram post. She wrote: “Before this tour, I spent a decade working with 360-degree sound and visual software in virtual reality and animation, creating Biophilia, the first app album, and later Vulnicura as a VR album. I was deeply inspired by the idea of a fully immersive experience, spending a spring in an Icelandic lighthouse, spreading Utopia into fully surround speakers. My intention was to bring what we had created for 21st-century VR into a 19th Century theatre - taking it from the headset to the stage.”

She went on: “This vision was realized with 27 moving curtains that captured projections on different textures and LED screens, creating a digitally animated show: a modern lanterna magica for live music. I also wanted to feature bespoke instruments: a magnetic harp, an aluphone, a circular flute, and a reverb chamber, specially built with an audio architect to enhance the most intimate version of a performance - in a personal chapel.”

But wait, Cornucopia: The Book also contains a narrative…

“Throughout this tale, there is a subplot woven in: a second story of an avatar - a modern marionette who alchemically mutates, from puppet to puppet, from the injury of a heart wound to a fully healed state.”

Got all that? Good.

It comes a week after Bjork teased details of her new tour film, also called Cornucopia. Filmed live in Lisbon, it’s now in post production with a release date likely next year. We do know that the film will illustrate the singer’s commitment to climate activism. Indeed she told Deadline last week about the project in the, er, form of a poem:

“It is an emergency/ in order to survive as a species we need to define our utopia/ The Paris climate accord is a modern utopia impossible to imagine/ but overcoming our environmental challenges is the only way/ we can survive.

“We have to imagine something that doesn’t exist, carve intentionally into the future/ and demand space for hope/ weave a matriarchal dome/ Let’s imagine a world where nature and technology collaborate and make a song/ about ita musical mockup then move into it.

“Let’s write music for our destination/ in mythologies around the world after a disaster one captures the spirit with a flute/ and starts anew/ carved out of the first fauna/ we arrive on a new island with mutant species unknown hybrids of birds and plants/ our past is on loop, turn it off/ let ́s be intentional about the light/ imagine a future be in it.”