Ladies and gentleman, prepared to have your mind confused, boggled, and exploded upon downloading Bjork’s Biophilia app that has just been officially released to the iTunes App store! It’s booming with creativity and inside it you’ll find a lot of focus on innovation. It’s a nice change considering that most musical applications for the Apple products focus on simple programming to make bank off mainstream Top 40 artists (see the countless results you find when typing in “Justin Beiber” into the search section) and ripping off Guitar Hero with drool inducing games like Tap Tap Revenge. Except for a handful of musical applications like the Inception and RjDj apps, it’s difficult to come across a download that contains actual substance, sparks the consumer’s thought process, and allows a sense of having yourself completely enthralled inside a sonic world. Luckily, the Biophilia app contains all of these things.

Right now, the main Biophilia app, adoringly called the “Mother App” is available exclusively through the App store for free and comes preloaded with the song “Cosmogony”. Inside of it’s realm, you’ll find the song itself, a stunning analytical essay put together by Nikki Dibben, the musical notation of the track, and an animation that follows each instrument of the song and looks like a combination of a sort of musical karaoke and what MIDI sequences look like when you’re programming them into your favorite Digital Audio Workspace.

A Screencap of the "Cosmogony" animation

Currently, the “Crystalline” app is also available for download for $1.99. It’s a more complex section of the program in that it features an interactive game in which you travel through different tunnels and collect different crystals to make different shapes and unlock more tunnels. What’s even more odd is that each tunnel represents a different part of the song, so when you go through it, the song will jump from where it currently is and travel to whichever part of the song that the specific tunnel you’re in holds. Nothing is linear, everything is confusing, and when the song is “over” and you make your crystal, you’re prompted to save it and E-mail it to all of your friends.

Weird, right? But still, it’s all mega cool.

A Screecap of the "Crystalline" musical notation

We’ll see if the app happens to become more cohesive as it unfolds, but right now, I recommend a download of it. It’s still one of the most experimental and intriquing apps on the market right now and if all else fails and you aren’t that interested, you get to listen to “Cosmogony” for free and as you navigate through the universes, song clips from all of the other tracks that are featured on the “Biophilia” record are introduced.

If that’s not enough to get you to check it out, you also get to hear one cool introduction by David Attenborough of the BBC documentary series Planet Earth fame. (How dope!)

Download the Biophilia App [iTunes]
Download Cosmogony Single [iTunes]
Download Crystalline Single [iTunes]