1 / 10
biophilia-moon
When we first heard about Björk's Biophilia, the first fully realized "app album" ever released, we became a little bit obsessed with it, interviewing developers (including a 19-year-old wunderkind), reviewing the song apps and the like.
Say what you will about the music, but nothing has come close to the way Biophilia re-imagined the album as something functional. It makes the static cardboard album art, whose loss has been so bemoaned over the years, look like, well, cardboard.
Björk's lead developer Scott Snibbe alerted Evolver.fm to the fact that the entire suite of apps is now available within the free "mothership" Biophilia app, which is free (each song app costs $2 — or you can buy them all for $10 (a 50 percent discount).
After tracking this app album from its earliest stages, interviewing two of its developers, and playing around with it extensively, we can safely say we've never seen anything like it.
Granted, not every band has the resources to make something like Biophilia, but it offers one key lesson to artists of all stripes: They might want to get to know an app developer or two.
Here's a screenshot from each song, courtesy of Snibbe, along with a choice quote about how it will blow your mind. To buy them, you'll need the latest version of Biophilia for iOS.
Above:
Say what you will about the music, but nothing has come close to the way Biophilia re-imagined the album as something functional. It makes the static cardboard album art, whose loss has been so bemoaned over the years, look like, well, cardboard.
Björk's lead developer Scott Snibbe alerted Evolver.fm to the fact that the entire suite of apps is now available within the free "mothership" Biophilia app, which is free (each song app costs $2 — or you can buy them all for $10 (a 50 percent discount).
After tracking this app album from its earliest stages, interviewing two of its developers, and playing around with it extensively, we can safely say we've never seen anything like it.
Granted, not every band has the resources to make something like Biophilia, but it offers one key lesson to artists of all stripes: They might want to get to know an app developer or two.
Here's a screenshot from each song, courtesy of Snibbe, along with a choice quote about how it will blow your mind. To buy them, you'll need the latest version of Biophilia for iOS.
Above:
'Moon'
"The app opens with a musical sequencer arranged as pearls strung out like ribs projecting from a central spine." (Read more about how "Moon" was made.)Screenshots from the iPad version of Biophilia courtesy Scott Snibbe.
See Also:- Björk’s Lead App Developer Riffs on Music, Nature and How Apps Are Like Talkies (Part 1)
