Sigríður Níelsdóttir started making music at the tender age of 70. Affectionately known as Grandma Lo-Fi, Sigríður records her music on a home cassette recorder, playing keyboard to the accompaniment of pets and any household appliances that made suitably strange and affecting sounds.
Now, Sigríður Níelsdóttir is Iceland’s most productive and unusual musical artist, with over 600 songs and 59 CDs to her name, and a growing fan base that includes Björk and members of Sigur Rós and Múm.
Stuart Rogers directed this short documentary on Sigríður Níelsdóttir, interviewing the legendary star at her home, where she talked to Kira Kira about her musical career and Stórsveit Sigríðar Níelsdóttur (The Sigríður Níelsdóttir Experience), an Icelandic supergroup that comes together to play live covers of Sigridur’s songs.
Rest of Stuart Rogers’ documentary on Grandma Lo-Fi, after the jump…
The August issue of Dazed & Confused magazine is guest edited by Björk. Dazed editor-in-chief, Rod Stanley interviewed her at home in Brooklyn. In an online excerpt from that conversation, she discusses her involvement with politics in her native Iceland.
“I thought I would never ever get involved in politics, because when I was younger you couldn’t get un-cooler than that! Then I saw how they were planning to change Iceland from an untouched natural spot into something like Frankfurt. People my age and younger didn’t have a voice.” Björk explains that she gave a concert that “30,000 people came to ... 10 per cent of the nation!” but felt that this changed nothing, and started workshops with her friend, the author and philosopher Oddn} Eir Ævarsdóttir, to encourage young businesses. Then the 2008 bank crash happened, almost wiping out the Icelandic economy overnight.
“All these economists were like our best mates by then, so we were right in the centre of it. And a lot of people in my generation who never cared about politics before were like, ‘This is an emergency situation!’ It was kind of amazing, though, because we’re such a small country that we can actually make changes.” Some of Björk’s friends even formed a political party called the Best Party, with a stand-up comedian running for mayor. “And he won! Much to his surprise! So now for 11 months all these punks have been running the city! We started a petition, and before I came here to complete my album we had a karaoke marathon for five days — it was amazing ... we got 40,000 signatures, and there are only 350,000 people in Iceland. Then we delivered it to the Prime Minister; that was a moment! We will see what happens, but at least it raised awareness.”
“It was a lot of work, but if you do all that work and don’t follow it up it’s never going to change anything.”
The Manchester International Festival has commissioned Björk for the world premiere of her Biophilia show in an intimate concert setting. Biophilia, her seventh studio album was partially recorded on an iPad and will be released as apps (directed by Michel Gondry) in conjunction with Apple. Somehow these apps will be utilized in the upcoming live shows, which will be her first in the UK for three years:
Björk will be at MIF for a three-week residency; six intimate shows in the striking space of Campfield Market Hall for audiences of 1800, her first Uk dates in over three years.
Where do music, nature and technology meet? Björk introduces Biophilia, her most ambitious and exciting work to date. A multimedia project encompassing music, apps, Internet, installations and live shows, Biophilia celebrates how sound works in nature, exploring the infinite expanse of the universe,from planetary systems to atomic structure.
Björk will be performing Biophilia tracks and music from her genre-defying back catalogue with a small group of unique musical collaborators, including an award-winning Icelandic female choir. The show will feature a range of specially conceived and crafted instruments, among them a bespoke pipe organ that accepts digital information and a pendulum that harnesses the earth’s gravitational pull to create musical patterns.
In a special collaboration with MIF, the Biophilia show will travel to major cities around the world following the Manchester premiere. MIF will be working with young people in Manchester to explore the ideas behind Björk’s Biophilia.
