Bjork - 2017 album

ok, not with her anymore. Google translated: "Tappi Tikarrass was born in 1981 and worked until 1983. At the beginning the band was composed of four boys from Reykjavík and later added to the singer Björk. The band drew a lot of attention at the time, for example, in the film Rokk in Reykjavík. The band was revived in 2015 and today the band consists of Eyþór Arnalds, Jakob Smári Magnússon, Eyjólfur Jóhannsson and Guðmundur Þór Gunnarsson, all the original members of the band. The band has finished recording a new album and has released two new songs this year, Spak and Listen."

I have had a really intense Bjork rennaisance lately, in the past 48h I have listened to:

Debut
Post
Debut Live
Post Live
Vespertine
Homogenic
Homogenic Live
Vespertine Live

I have discovered a LOT, namely this track where she breaks out into "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" at the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e57qKloIHrM

and this magnificent thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb-pobBiKkI

“The Gate” is out now.

https://open.spotify.com/track/5YmQRn9i1ZDRfMUt5M80Cv

This is heavy Medulla mode Bjork. Probably not going to be into this until after 5 years, if I live that long.

wasn't expecting anything so wafty... one day I'll listen to the last album :/

This track is v boring

Hate to say it, but I agree. Seems like I tend to like Bjork more when she's upset than when she's content.

Oh except she's not content here. Oh well, guess I'm just not smitten atm.

I kind of expected it to sound like this. Oh well.

I’m not feeling the new track either; except for the gorgeous intro it sounds like a boring Biophilia outtake but with Arca’s production shtick (that I’m kind of over). But apparently the rest of the album is very different sound-wise. Airy and happy. She has put together a twelve-piece Icelandic flute ensemble and they are featured on the record. So I’ll hold my judgement until I hear the whole thing.

(The title is Utopia, by the way.)

Same. She was comparing it at least thematically in interviews to Vespertine, so I have no choice but to trust her.

Wow... It's like I've been listening to a different track entirely than all of you. This is beautiful, and miles away from Medulla.

Don't mind me, but if you call such an intimate, skin-on-skin song "dull" or "boring", then maybe Björk isn't for you anymore? Idk. I just don't get the negative responses. This sounds very much in line with Vespertine, minus the icicle Matmos production, stripped of sonicry. I agree it probably needs to be heard in the context of the album. But this is not dull, nor boring.

Sparse, minimal (those two alone rule out Medulla refs already imo), stark naked (like Vulnicura was). While I agree that this could be an unfortunate choice for a single (whatever a "single" means nowadays for artists who work album-wise, like Björk), the song itself is great. I am so on board, yet again.

with LBI on this

Ross <3

getting a selected ambient works 2 vibe from this

Utopia (out in November)

https://pitchfork.com/news/bjork-reveals-new-album-title/

oh, we already knew - sorry :-)

https://www.nowness.com/story/bjork-the-gate-alessandro-michele-andrew-thomas-huang-james-merry

Whatever piece of music that opens the video, I like very much. And I admit the song has more impact with the visual accompaniment.

great video, excited about bjork again

in the spirit of #metoo i would like to lend women around the world a hand with a more detailed description of my experience with a danish director . it feels extremely difficult to come out with something of this nature into the public , especially when immediately ridiculed by offenders . i fully sympathise with everyone who hesitates , even for years . but i feel it is the right time especially now when it could make a change . here comes a list of the encounters that i think count as sexual harassment :
1 after each take the director ran up to me and wrapped his arms around me for a long time in front of all crew or alone and stroked me sometimes for minutes against my wishes
2 when after 2 months of this i said he had to stop the touching , he exploded and broke a chair in front of everyone on set . like someone who has always been allowed to fondle his actresses . then we all got sent home .
3 during the whole filming process there were constant awkward paralysing unwanted whispered sexual offers from him with graphic descriptions , sometimes with his wife standing next to us .
4 while filming in sweden , he threatened to climb from his room´s balcony over to mine in the middle of the night with a clear sexual intention , while his wife was in the room next door . i escaped to my friends room . this was what finally woke me up to the severity of all this and made me stand my ground
5 fabricated stories in the press about me being difficult by his producer . this matches beautifully the weinstein methods and bullying . i have never eaten a shirt . not sure that is even possible .
6 i didnt comply or agree on being sexually harassed . that was then portrayed as me being difficult . if being difficult is standing up to being treated like that , i´ll own it .
hope
let´s break this curse
warmth
björk

I was not aware of this. Fuck Lars Von Trier.

As a lot of people noted, though, she was pretty clear at the time that the experience soured her on both acting and Von Trier. This is an angrier underscoring as to why.

Yes, fuck Von Trier.
Also, fuck his sleazy production team for enabling it and framing Björk afterwards as the crazy/difficult one with their ridiculous stories, and now claiming "they were the victims" and that "she dictated everything and was about to close a movie of 100m kroner". Boo-fucking-hoo.
And fuck Catherine Deneuve for being a sexual harrasment apologist and perpetuating Von Trier's lies in interviews for years.

Very proud of Björk for coming out with this story.

No way in hell I'll watch another Von trier after this

No way in hell I'll watch another Von trier after this

Talentless cunt anyway.

I think of all the noisy, pretentious edgelord type eejits of the movie industry in this era, he seems the most talentless and most unbearable personality disorder type of the lot. I can't imagine how anyone could sit through a movie like Nymphomaniac, unless they are being paid or someone is holding a gun to their head. I'm glad Bjork is mirking him up. But can't help feeling if there was a just God in this universe, then this fucker would have been taken out by an icicle of piss decades ago.

With a movie like "Nymphomanica", the non-rhetorical question that should spring to anyone's mind is "Why did he make this film?"

LOL, spot on. All of these 'noisy, pretentious edgelord types' are fucking shit anyway. (xp)

Ah, this is a Bjork thread, mildly going off topic there.

Amongst other things then, it's a damn shame as it's clear that Bjork would have made a great actor had she done more films. She was pretty amazing in that one film..

xpost to myself, not Tom D.

I think of all the noisy, pretentious edgelord type eejits of the movie industry in this era, he seems the most talentless and most unbearable personality disorder type of the lot. I can't imagine how anyone could sit through a movie like Nymphomaniac, unless they are being paid or someone is holding a gun to their head. I'm glad Bjork is mirking him up. But can't help feeling if there was a just God in this universe, then this fucker would have been taken out by an icicle of piss decades ago.

― calzino, Wednesday, 18 October 2017 09:44 (forty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok, coming from you especially, I'm gonna have to cry foul here

also, while he was clearly out of control and shitty to bjork, this is one case where I would be interested in hearing his reply - especially because I don't think he'll deny everything or offer a dismissive apology like most men do.

but then again this is hard for me to process

Actually, he has already denied it:

Danish film director Lars von Trier has rejected Icelandic pop singer Björk’s allegation that he sexually harassed her during the making of the movie Dancer in the Dark.

“That was not the case. But that we were definitely not friends, that’s a fact,” Von Trier told Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in its online edition.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/17/not-the-case-lars-von-trier-denies-sexually-harassing-bjork

Imago, when you are talking about someone who it appears to me, has surrounded himself with a coterie of yes-people and enablers, and then from a position of power attempts to sexually harass a woman, then attempts to exert his power(and that of his group of acolytes) to punish her for knocking him back. Then I thought it would be fair to describe such behaviour as a symptom of an unbearable personality disorder. I didn't use a disability slur word or anything. Is this being "called out"? ffs!

"she dictated everything and was about to close a movie of 100m kroner"

.. I don't blame her, tbqh

your post would have still made the same sense without the bolded words, that's all! associating personality disorders with abusive behaviour isn't right imo

well yeah, you have to think of Hitler's feelings as well.

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/22905037_10155821943851460_660015071562070825_o.jpg?oh=fe9975b343cac08b7eeff4e428960e01&oe=5A66ACBC

14 tracks, total running time of 01:11:38.
"Conceived by Björk & Arca"

wow

Bjork wins Halloween this year.

Artist who did the makeup is drag queen Hungry: https://www.instagram.com/isshehungry very sickening yet awesome work. I can see why Bjork would have chosen her work, it's very symmetrical and some of it even seems inspired by the same aesthetics bjork has used in the past. e.g.: https://www.instagram.com/p/BUzmenOjDLz/

I kind wish they have gone with something like that, this one is kind of disturbing and not as aesthetically pleasing what with the bird fetus and voldemort slits on the neck and the alien vagina on her forehead.

A few of the track titles (some might be work-in-progress and/or variations of one track): Allow, Arisen My Senses, Blissing Me, Body Manners, Body Memory, Courtship, Features Creatures, Future Forever, The Gate, Loss, Utopia.

"Features Creatures" is Bjork singing over this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FQ2DAEh1Mw

(This is not a joke.)

Apparently the album flows in four distinct movements and features birdsong, flutes, harps, choirs, woodwinds etc. Overall a pretty light/airy feel but there's also a track with Rabit ("Loss"), so expect darker elements as well. Arca is not only the co-producer but also the co-writer on many songs.

A tour with a 12-piece flute ensemble is planned (first announced date: London's All Points East Festival in May). Björk said she might play flute on stage.

Well then ...

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/23116701_10155827244516460_8675642920107884561_o.jpg?oh=0910a185ef6b408da4bd48a50182846f&oe=5A6B6563

https://www.facebook.com/bjork/posts/10155827276611460

kudos for trying something new

If this doesn't end up my new least favorite Bjork LP, I'll eat my copy of Volta.

Recently finished writing a review which includes the phrase "cross-species cephalopod Shaman for the chthulucene" so feel pretty damn vindicatd now fyi fuiud.

http://images.45cat.com/eddie-kendricks-goin-up-in-smoke-motown-2.jpg

welp I should definitely not have loaded this thread at work

Björk’s New Album Is a Love Letter to Optimism

the orkestral gigs are at least their own thing (that i'd be much sadder to miss)

& yeah good point that they're probably pre-covid arrangements that got delayed (since both western australia and japan were opened borders later than most). she almost certainly doesn't have a new show ready for fossora yet either (at least she's updating it) but it's just odd overall

utopia wasn't that long after vulnicura, relatively, so a few vulnicura shows happening while she was gearing up to release utopia wasn't that weird in comparison.

New album slowly inching it’s way to being one of my favorites of this year. Possibly her most moving album for me.

I finally was in the right headspace to listen to Fossora for the first time, and I'm much more in than I expected. Not a lot of pop hooks, but no one's expecting that from Bjork at this point, and I love the textures on the more calm tracks (Mycelia, Allow, and Her Mother's House for sure). 'Atopos' is probably my least favorite track, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Btw I made my own Soundslike-like 'Quiet Bjork' playlist if anyone wants -
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4kGcjsqUePEJ80w6hDK4uP?si=5813e34b33de4fa3

I cannot get over how starkly beautiful "Her Mother's House" is. Just a stunning arrangement -- how she interweaves the two vocal parts with the cor anglais, eventually uniting at the ~3:55 mark. Her discography has some gorgeous closers ("Unison," "All is Full of Love," "The Anchor Song," "Headphones") but this may be my favorite.

Bringing an acoustic/orchestral set to a huge open-air festival field filled with people waiting for Frank Ocean is gutsy but I'd say she pulled it off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whtd1wGfUoQ

Wow, was the whole set sans beats/drums?

Yes, just a string orchestra

Bold move indeed!

i love her so much

Daring! The strings-only version of "Pluto" is great

Noted that the conductor is free of headphones, this was all live live no click no tricks. Impressive. I find my ears and heart wanting to hear "a full orchestra" in this context but wonder if the rigidity of it being strings-only is what makes it so powerful

That is wonderful - thanks for posting

Supposedly Frank actually requested Bjork to be on the bill (and "open" for him)

would pay stupid money for a bjönk oceansdottir concert

There’s a million Björk threads

is this what you call sharing ? pic.twitter.com/A2ewPgmiK4

— björk (@bjork) November 3, 2023

lol @ the Israel War Room quote-tweeting her, what a bunch of freaks

ngl I like this more than her past few albums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jsi2Tgvx6A

(probably bc the song was apparently written 25 years ago?)

yeah this is the best thing she's done in forever

apparently it was 'too poppy' for vespertine and then she just forgot what it was called so she couldn't find the demo in her archives until she remembered this year

it's so odd to hear rosalia on this, someone else singing such an unmistakably bjork melody alongside her. not at all bad though!

Forever, or since Vulnicura maybe is good enough

But at this point, yes, I'll take a good dose of Bjork revisiting some vault items from circa late '90s/early '00s

"stonemilker" is the only real exception there. or "who is it" too if i were to more specifically say 'since vespertine'

oh wow her vocal is from the original pre-vespertine recording too. it sounds like the main thing that was newly recorded is the drums? (and rosalia's vocal of course)

love this so much. video is great too wow

Flutes and violin arrangements are probably new too - at least they sound more like Vulnicura/Utopia influenced arrangements than Homogenic.

Love this and the video

I’m a massive fan of Björk’s last three albums (and after finally seeing her live Cornucopia show last week I’m even more in love with her latter-day output than I thought I could be) but it’s so cool to hear this unearthed recording of her younger voice and more poppy/accessible style. I find it so nostalgic, brings me back to my teenage years.

Also weird to hear Rosalía sing in English lol! But I love it.

She also sings in english in single “LLYLM” released earlier this year.

Feel nostalgic and slightly sad hearing this great song, like a glimpse of a potential Bjork that pushed on in the direction of Vespertine. I do really like and admire some of the places she's gone over the years but never loved them like I loved Homogenic and Vespertine