Vespertine

Vespertine was begun during the shooting of Dancer in the Dark under the working title Domestika, and Björk said she worked on it for three years. It was recorded in Spain, London, Reykjavík and across New York, including Avatar, Sear Sound, Quad and the Hit Factory, and mixed by Mark Spike Stent. Undo was written with Thomas Knak in Reykjavík, and Heirloom grew from Martin Console's piece Crabcraft. Matmos added microbeats made from shuffling cards and cracking ice. Who made most of the beats is disputed, and Matmos describe the work as shared.

Tour and reception

The tour opened at the Grand Rex in Paris on 18 August 2001 with Matmos, the harpist Zeena Parkins, a Greenlandic Inuit women's choir and the conductor Simon Lee. A show at the Royal Opera House on 16 December 2001 came out on DVD in 2002. The album reached number nineteen in the US, with 75,000 sold in the first week, and number eight in the UK, and was number one in Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, France and Norway. Metacritic scores it 88, Pitchfork gave it 7.2, and it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Album. The Wire placed it first in its 2001 Rewind, and the Guardian ranked it 27th among the best albums of the 21st century in 2019.