bjork
Björk Salutes Her Late Mother on New Song ‘Ancestress’
Björk salutes her late mother Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir on her new song “Ancestress,” the third pre-release track from her upcoming album Fossora. In the Andrew Thomas Huang-directed video, Björk, in a flowing red dress and black, beak-like headpiece, walks amid mountains and caves in tandem with dancers and musicians playing gongs and violins. Björk’s son Sindri Eldon sings on the track, which she says represents her mother’s “story seen from my point of view” and was written just after her funeral. “It is written in chronological order. The first verse is my childhood and so on. Only recently did I discover that this song is probably somehow inspired by an Icelandic song, ‘Grafskrift,’ which is somehow a very direct and patriarchial account of someone’s life. I probably wanted to approach ...
Björk Keeps It Weird on Love-Themed New Song ‘Ovule’
Björk keeps it weird on “Ovule,” the second track to be released in advance of her new album, Fossora. Björk contributed timpani and trombone arrangements and crafted the beat in tandem with sideproject, while El Guincho offered additional production. In the accompanying video, executive produced by Kat Davey, Björk dons a series of increasingly bizarre dark red, black and metallic silver outfits as she sings about love in its many forms. She says of the song: “ovule for me is my definition of loveit is a meditation about us as lovers walking around this worldand i imagine 2 spheres or satellites following us aroundone above us that represents ideal loveone below us representing the shadows of loveand we ourselves walk around in the third sphere of real love,where the everyday monday-morni...
Björk Shimmies in a Mushroom Forest in ‘Atopos’ Video
Björk shimmies and sways in a strange mushroom forest in the video for “Atopos,” the first single from her upcoming album Fossora. In the Viðar Logi-directed clip, Björk is surrounded by a bass clarinet section and Gabber Modus Operandi’s DJ Kasimyn as she sings about the importance of interpersonal connection: “If we don’t grow outwards towards love / We’ll implode inwards towards destruction / If my plant doesn’t reach towards you / There’s internal erosion towards all / Pursuing the light too hard is a form of hiding.” [embedded content][embedded content] Musically, “Atopos” extends Björk’s devotion to unconventional instrumental backdrops topped by her instantly recognizable vocals, and lives up to her description last week of the album as “biological techno.” “It is a good intro — kin...
Björk Unveils Fossora Release Date, Cover Art
Björk has confirmed a Sept. 30 release date for her new album, Fossora, and has also unveiled the cover art, shot by photographer Vidar Logi. In it, the Icelandic innovator is portrayed as a Gothic queen sitting atop a spread of mushrooms. Björk explained that the record was inspired by the pandemic: “it was also woven into how i experienced the ‘now,’ this time around 7 billion of us did it together, nesting in our homes quarantining, being long enough in one place that we shot down roots.” Björk wrote that Fossora is a made-up word that means “the feminine of fossore (digger, delver, ditcher) so in short it means ‘she who digs’ (into the ground).” The album’s lead single, “Atopos,” is “coming soon,” according to another Instagram teaser. Meanwhile, Björk’s new podcast, Björk: Sonic ...
Björk Explores Her Discography on New Podcast Sonic Symbolism
Björk will dig deep into “the textures, timbres and emotional landscapes of each of her albums” as part of the new podcast Sonic Symbolism, which launches Sept. 1 with episodes on Debut, Post and Homogenic. Future album-by-album installments of the Talkhouse/Mailchimp Presents project will roll out weekly from there. Sonic Symbolism consists of conversations between Björk and philosopher/writer Oddný Eir and musicologist Ásmundur Jónsson. Listeners can get a taste of what’s to come via this trailer. “When I get asked about the differences of the music of my albums, I find it quickest to use visual short cuts,” Björk says. “That’s kind of why my album covers are almost like homemade tarot cards. The image on the front might seem like just a visual moment, but for me it is simply describing ...
Björk Details ‘Organic, Spacious’ New Album Featuring Her Children
Björk has unveiled details of her first album in five years in a new interview with The Guardian. The project is titled Fossora (Latin for “digger”) and is expected to be released this fall. Björk’s children Sindri and Ísadóra sing on the album, as does serpentwithfeet, while the Indonesian group Gabber Modus Operandi is also featured. Writes journalist Chal Ravens of Fossora, “on the cover, she is a glowing forest sprite, her fingertips fusing with the fantastic fungi under her hooves. Compared with the cloudy electronics of 2017’s Utopia, it is organic and spacious, earthbound rather than dreamy, and filled with warmth and breath. It is also a world of contrasts: the album’s two lodestones are bass clarinet and violent outbursts of gabber. There are moments of astonishing virtuosity and ...
The 90 Greatest Albums of the ’90s
This article originally appeared in the September 1999 issue of SPIN. “You must be high.” We heard that a lot during the time we spent preparing this issue. Which is understandable. Pronouncing the 90 greatest albums of the ’90s is a somewhat presumptuous thing to do. When you’re measuring the music this decade is offering to history—the sounds we partied with, copulated to, fought about, and wept over—everyone has an opinion. That ours should be more valid than yours is debatable. But hey—it’s our magazine. What, then, you ask, constitutes “greatest”? Don’t even start. Suffice it to say that, after much heated discussion and countless veiled insults, it came down to the factors of both remarkable artistry and cultural shock value. Sometimes a record’s knock-you-off-your-Skechers impa...
Björk Announces California Dates for Cornucopia Tour
Björk announced a slate of new dates for her Cornucopia tour in 2022. Cornucopia is the first theatrical production by the Icelandic singer that debuted as a residency at The Shed in New York City in the spring of 2019. The performances received high praise, so Icelandic legend is bringing it back. This time, Björk will venture to San Francisco and Los Angeles for a 5-date California-only run in late January and early February of next year. Back in her home country, she’s also embarking on an intimate, Björk Orchestral tour, featuring her songs performed by members of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, flute septet Viibra, the Hamrahlid Choir, and special guests. The Iceland tour will hit four shows this fall in Reykjavík, and the performances will be streamed live online. These shows were in...
The 40 Greatest Music Video Artists
Music videos are the perfect bastard child of art and commerce, even more than pop music itself. A promotional visual accompaniment to a popular song doesn’t need a coherent narrative (although on rare occasions, they do). It just needs to suit the song, sell the record, and possibly make the artist look cool. But since the launch of MTV 40 years ago this week, a select few recording artists have helped raise music videos to an art form — sometimes by accident, and sometimes by carefully curating the work of brilliant directors like Mark Romanek, Hype Williams, and Spike Jonze. Here are 40 artists from the last four decades that helped video kill the radio star. 40. Lil Kim [embedded content] Although earlier female MCs like Salt-N-Pepa and Queen Latifah used music videos to help launch th...
Women’s History Month Tribute: Björk
The brilliance of Björk can extend interminably outward, filling out the starry firmament from which she finds inspiration and unity. To call Björk unique is an infinite understatement. She’s more of a protean polymath exploring the outer rims of the psyche with an unflappable lust for life. Because, in her own words: “The unknown turns me on.” As an impressionable teenager of the late ‘70s, Björk was bedazzled by the punk conquest. She drifted in and out of mainly arty, transient post-punk projects from the self-formed Exodus to Tappi Tikarrass to KUKL, the last of which morphed into her most well-known pre-solo band, The Sugarcubes, in 1986. That final installment of short-lived groups garnered enough attention to break out of domestic Icelandic success only, and for her to break out of ...
Björk Teams With Iceland’s Hamrahhlíð Choir on ‘Cosmogony’
Björk and frequent collaborator Sjón wrote “Cosmogony,” the first single from the Icelandic Hamrahlíð Choir’s upcoming album Come and be Joyful, which is out on Dec. 6. “Cosmogony” is an entirely a capella work first performed by the Hamrahlíð Choir at the premiere performance of Björk’s Cornucopia shows at the Shed in New York in May and June of 2019. The title is a word referring to the origin of the universe, especially the solar system. Come and be Joyful features Icelandic folk songs along with two collaborative Björk covers – “Cosmogony” as well as “Sonnets” — both based on Björk’s arrangements. Listen to “Cosmogony” below. “I am so incredibly grateful that the hamrahlíð choir and it’s original conductor þorgerður ingólfsdóttir came on tour with me,” Björk said in a st...
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