Ex-Sugarcube Makes a Sweet Solo Move

From her gold face-paint to her Princess Leia hairdo, from her primal, unearthly vocals to her eclectic musical mixes, “normal” is the last thing Bjork aspires to be.

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So it shouldn’t be any surprise to hear the singer from Iceland (who uses just her first name) claim that her music is more influenced by TV nature-show narrator David Attenborough than by any musical models.

“He was my idol as a kid,” she says in clipped English tinged with British slang. “I liked the way he could walk into some chaotic forest and explain it all. I’m a bit of a David Attenborough with my music and vocals. Like he brings people into the forest and explains it, I go in a song and kind of explain how you’re feeling--shivery here, calm here. I’m more a narrator than a singer.”

Bjork, 27, recently released her first solo album, “Debut,” after leaving the popular alternative-rock band the Sugarcubes last year.

Her cool mutations of jazz, art-house punk and tribal beats have reached into the Top 10 of the college radio airplay charts and have landed her first single, “Human Behavior,” in MTV’s Buzz Bin.

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Bjork, who appears at the Wiltern Theatre on Friday, describes her move to solo status as “selfish but satisfying.” She was bursting to hear her own ideas in a pure form, unrestricted by the Sugarcubes’ requirements, so the offbeat artist recorded half of “Debut” before Elektra Records had even worked out a solo deal with her.

“I did this album sneakily,” she says proudly. “I did not tell the record company and kind of did it for myself. It was done in homes and cheap studios a couple hours at a time. Most people I worked with did it off their enthusiasm with the promise I’d pay them later.”

When a deal was finally signed, she used some of the money to send tracks to jazz saxophonist Oliver Lake in New York and to musicians and engineers in Bombay for overdubbed enhancement. “Having other people decorate the songs is like putting the berry on the cake,” she says.

Bjork (whose last name is Gudmundsdottir) was raised by her parents in a hippie commune, where she was exposed to such rock titans as Cream and Jimi Hendrix. She also listened to jazz at her grandparents’ home, and studied classical at a music school. The three genres eventually began to merge.

“All these adults I was around thought their music was brilliant and everyone else was an idiot. So . . . I became skeptical and decided I’m definitely not gonna do things that way. I picked up on all three and realized that style is just what emotion you want to put across.”

Bjork went on to sing, produce and play on nearly 20 albums, from children’s music to film soundtracks to 15-piece punk orchestras. She also began to hang out in her hometown of Reykjavik with an arty group of punk-rockers, poets and writers who began playing as the Sugarcubes in 1986.

The Sugarcubes’ underground notoriety sparked Iceland’s first record industry boom, and the band was signed by Elektra in 1988. It went on to build a substantial underground following in Europe and the United States with its two albums.

The single mother and her 7-year-old son are now adjusting to their recent move to London. Bjork worried at first that she had “sold out” by leaving the isolated city that had allowed her to produce odd music with little or no pressure. But she found that it’s her own passion, not her surroundings, that keeps her sound free to roam.

“I love to make music about spontaneity and momentum,” she says. “That’s why I like pop music. Though it’s not meant to last forever, it goes completely from your head to your toes like a blast of excitement. It’s that rush that keeps me going.”