{"id":12516,"date":"2017-12-01T12:48:29","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T01:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stuartbuchanan.com\/?p=12516"},"modified":"2021-01-31T05:07:44","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T05:07:44","slug":"sarah-hopkins-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/2017\/12\/01\/sarah-hopkins-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW. Sarah Hopkins – the Aussie who scored a spot on Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s Utopia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s latest album\u00a0Utopia<\/em>\u00a0is a collaboration between the Icelandic artist and Venezuelan producer Alejandro Ghersi, also known as\u00a0Arca<\/strong>. All of the 14 album tracks are credited solely to Bj\u00f6rk and Ghersi, with one exception: the track \u2018Features Creatures\u2019 has a writing credit for Australian artist\u00a0Sarah Hopkins<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Hopkins is a Queensland-based composer-performer, most well known for her work\u00a0Past Life Melodies.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It holds the honour of being the most performed Australian choral work in the world, and uses vocal techniques not traditionally found in Western choral music, such as harmonic overtones, Indigenous chants and throat singing.<\/p>\n

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah in tandem with my recent Bj\u00f6rk interview. Read our chat below, originally published at\u00a0 doublej.net.au.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The Aussie who scored a spot on Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s Utopia<\/h1>\n

Bj\u00f6rk’s latest album\u00a0Utopia<\/em>\u00a0is a collaboration between the Icelandic artist and Venezuelan producer Alejandro Ghersi, also known as\u00a0Arca<\/strong>. All of the 14 album tracks are credited solely to Bj\u00f6rk and Ghersi, with one exception: the track \u2018Features Creatures’ has a writing credit for Australian artist\u00a0Sarah Hopkins<\/strong>.
\nHopkins is a Queensland-based composer-performer, most well known for her work\u00a0Past Life Melodies.\u00a0<\/em>It holds the honour of being the most performed Australian choral work in the world, and uses vocal techniques not traditionally found in Western choral music, such as harmonic overtones, Indigenous chants and throat singing.
\nGiven Bj\u00f6rk’s back catalogue, this reads like an inspired artistic match, but it is an entirely different component of Hopkins’ work that can be found on\u00a0Utopia \u2013\u00a0<\/em>a unique and bizarre instrument called the harmonic whirly.
\nMade from corrugated plastic tubing of various lengths, the harmonic whirly produces a series of celestial harmonic tones when spun above the head at different speeds. Created by Sarah in 1981, they are designed as instruments of \u201csonic play\u201d rather than technical precision.
\n\u201cPart of my passion for creating the harmonic whirlies was to make instruments that absolutely anyone could play,” Sarah says. \u201cYou don’t need any musical experience, and you can immediately create beautiful melodies. You can’t play out of tune, you can’t make a mistake \u2013 it’s very liberating.\u201d
\nA work recorded by Sarah for harmonic whirly, titled \u2018Kindred Spirits’, made it onto a compilation album titled\u00a0Gravikords, Whirlies &amp; Pyrophones,<\/em>\u00a0a collection of music made by unusual instruments. It featured artists such as Hans Reichel, who designed small polished wooden sculptures that he played with a violin bow; Wendy Mae Chambers, who performed ‘New York New York’ using car horns; and Michel Moglia, whose giant steel organ was played by billowing fire.
\nIn 1996, a copy of the album made its way into the hands of Bj\u00f6rk, and she’s been playing it ever since. \u201cIt was my favourite album,\u201c Bj\u00f6rk says. \u201cI used to listen to it all of the time.\u201d
\n\u201cI have billions on songs on various playlists,\u201d she notes, \u201cand as the years pass by, I get bored of some songs, and they fall out of my playlist. \u2018Kindred Spirits’ is one song that, 20 years later, is still in my playlist and I just do not get bored of it. \u00a0Every time I play it to friends, their hairs stand up and they look at me and they say \u2018what\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0this?’\u201d
\nMany more people around the world may well now have the same experience, as Bj\u00f6rk has included signature components of \u2018Kindred Spirits’ within \u2018Features Creatures’ on\u00a0Utopia.<\/em>
\nAs an artist whose work is profoundly connected with nature, Bj\u00f6rk has described her previous work,\u00a0Vulnicura<\/em>\u00a0(documenting the end of her marriage to artist Matthew Barney) as being a heavy element, \u201clike rocks\u201d. For\u00a0Utopia<\/em>, she wanted to take the opposite approach.
\n\u201cI was a year and half into the album,\u201d she explains. \u201cI was thinking\u00a0\u2018<\/em>OK, this is an\u00a0air\u00a0<\/em>album‘<\/em>. I made a playlist for myself and Alejandro, featuring all the things \u2018airy’ in my music library and of course Sarah Hopkins was in that. It just seemed very natural to include her and I’m very thrilled that she was up for it.\u201d
\nSarah describes the collaboration as \u201ca fantastic gift from the gods and a beautiful collaboration\u201d.
\n\u201cThe opening, with the haunting melody of the harmonic whirly, resonates on a deep, soul level and energetically calls one in to hear more,\u201d she says. \u201dYou then have Bj\u00f6rk’s lyric, sharing that primal, often unconscious, truth about the human process of searching for love. It’s an interesting juxtaposition musically, and Bj\u00f6rk’s’ lyrics and melody stay with you in a very hypnotic way.\u201d
\nIt is undoubtedly a unique and successful collaboration, but it is not the first time that Bj\u00f6rk had been in touch with Sarah.
\n\u201cA few years ago, someone from Bj\u00f6rk’s production team contacted me,” Sarah says.\u00a0“Bj\u00f6rk had an idea of entering her live show on a bicycle, with a couple of harmonic whirlies strapped to her, to produce sounds as she rode onto the stage.\u201d
\nIt’s a startling image and one that may well still see the light of day.
\n\u201cI believe that she’s wanting to do a world tour,\u201d says Sarah, \u201cso who knows? There may be live harmonic whirlies with her on stage. We will see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s latest album\u00a0Utopia\u00a0is a collaboration between the Icelandic artist and Venezuelan producer Alejandro Ghersi, also known as\u00a0Arca. All of the 14 album tracks are credited solely to Bj\u00f6rk and Ghersi, with one exception: the track \u2018Features Creatures\u2019 has a writing credit for Australian artist\u00a0Sarah Hopkins. Hopkins is a Queensland-based composer-performer, most well known for her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444,453],"tags":[571,1311,1610],"class_list":["post-12516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-planet","category-writing","tag-bjork","tag-sarah-hopkins","tag-stuartbuchanan-blog","missing-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15286,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12516\/revisions\/15286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}