“Every album always starts with a feeling that I try to translate into sound. This time it was like landing and sinking our feet into the ground. That’s how I felt the ‘now’ moment. This time seven billion of us were all experiencing. together. We were nesting in our homes, in quarantine. We stayed in one place long enough to settle down. My new album Excavators that’s exactly what it’s about. There is a word in the title that came to mind: dig. She who digs in the earth “, the artist presents his work.
“My previous album Utopia it was like ice in the clouds, it had a lot of air and no bass, “he adds. This time the sound is dominated by bass and heavy bass.” We had six bass clarinets and a powerful subwoofer, “explains Björk.
The musician spent the entire lockdown period in her native Reykjavík – admits she hasn’t stayed home for so long since she was 16. During the pandemic, she held raves for family, colleagues, friends and their children at her place of residence. Album Excavators the content is influenced by the death of Bjork’s mother and the growth of her daughter Isadora, or Doa. Doa started her life: she studies, plays, makes films and writes music. The songs on the album feature the voices of both Doa and Bjork’s eldest son Sindri. The two previous albums were created following the divorce between Bjork and her ex-husband artist Matthew Barney: the first- vulnerability (2015) – is an “album of anxiety and sadness” (chronicle of the artist’s broken heart), the second – Utopia (2017) is a “survival album” (a survival mechanism that is activated after painful experiences), a vision of paradise with songs of birds and flutes.
After the flights Utopia in the clouds, Bjork wanted to “fall back to earth”. Construction Excavators, Bjork thought of his ancestors, descendants and the land of fire and ice, Iceland that connects them. The album reflects his passion for mushrooms: the metaphor of mushrooms pervades the entire project. “Mushrooms live underground, they are different from tree roots. My ‘tree root album’ would be completely different, rather harsh and stoic, but mushrooms are psychedelic and appear unexpectedly everywhere,” Bjorka points out.
Excavators in the songs, the bass clarinet sound is intertwined with sufficiently heavy sounding techno music, as well as the traditions of Icelandic choral music and folk music. The singer’s creative partners this time include an Indonesian punk duo Gabber mode of operation, who in his work combines gamelan sounds with experimental music. They describe what the trio created with the term “techno biological”.
Information: bjork.com, fossora.com
–
