Biophilia is the eighth studio album by Icelandic recording artist Björk. It was released on 5 October 2011, by One Little Indian Records and distributed by Nonesuch Records in North America and by Universal Music Group in the rest of the world. Björk composed it as a concept album during the 2008–11 Icelandic financial crisis, exploring the links between nature, music and technology. Billed as the first “app album”, Biophilia is a multimedia project released alongside a series of apps linking the album’s themes to musicology concepts. It was followed by a series of educational workshops in four continents.
Four singles were released before the album’s release in 2011. “Crystalline”, co-produced with English dubstep duo 16bit, was released as the lead single on June 28, 2011, accompanied by a music video directed by longtime collaborator Michel Gondry. It was followed by the singles “Cosmogony”, “Virus” and “Moon”. Björk promoted the album with the Biophilia Tour, which began at the Manchester International Festival in June 2011 and ended in September 2013.
I was off all my record deals, […] so I felt I was off the grid, […] so in that sense it was kind of crossroads project for me. On another level, at the end of the last project I lost my voice, [I] had a vocal nodule, […] I didn’t even know if I could sing again, so I had to redefine different techniques. And then, all these situation were happening in Iceland, the Bank crush, so I got really involved in environmental stuff [there]. So, on so many different levels, there was this message that all the old systems don’t work anymore, you gotta clear your table and start from scratch.
—Björk on the background of Biophilia.