Bjork - 2017 album

i was going to argue that 'the gate' is a brilliant song but agree that it's a terrible choice for a single.

but...what is a "single" these days, to someone like Bjork, for an album like this? is the goal to actually get on the radio and get a fluke #1 hit (so in that case, you'd want a single that's really catchy)? maybe it wouldn't be a fluke hit? i have no idea if new bjork songs chart anywhere around the world these days.

is it to kind of serve as a showcase piece for the album to people who are interested enough to maybe check out a single song posted on a website/blog somewhere before making the commitment of hitting the play button on spotify for the entire album?

or is a Bjork single, for an album like this that is more of a singular flowing piece than a collection of hits, aimed more at the committed fan, as a representation of the spirit of the rest of the album? it's only this case that supports "the gate" as a single, at least if you like it (it gives me the chills!), because it's a total failure if it's aimed at radio airplay or even a casual fan. the second minute, where it gets really quiet and those eerie synth-brass-bird lines rain down, along with the feedback, and "my healed chest wound/transformed into a gate"... is beautiful but ultimately not attention-grabbing for the music fan furiously clicking around tabs looking for a fix.

i'm just kind of rambling, sorry. i guess i'm just trying to say i don't even understand the purpose of ANY single for an artist like this (already well established with a huge fanbase) and an album like this (not singles-oriented). i get that the record company has to have something to push, along with a video.

AFAICT, she hasn't had a top 10 hit anywhere in the world since Homogenic.

is it to kind of serve as a showcase piece for the album to people who are interested enough to maybe check out a single song posted on a website/blog somewhere before making the commitment of hitting the play button on spotify for the entire album?

This is exactly the sense that I meant, admittedly because I played it at home before the album came out and got a 'can we turn this off?' from my partner, but when I later played the album starting with track #4 it was more like 'this is much better than whatever you played last weekend'.

I think *for Björk* the 'single' is indeed a showcase. Not just for the album, but for her new look, presence, the story she wants to tell, what she wants to convey. She's perfected doing this throughout the years (whether you're a fan or not).

Her singles dvd (needs updating) shows a magnificent evolution in how her approach of "the single" and "the video" changed. And of course she was ahead of the pack. I'd argue the death of music television as we knew it (mtv playing music videos) liberated her. No longer you "had" to have a video (because you "had" to have a single). Rather, a "single" doesn't have to be the song execs think has the biggest hit potential, but rather it can be a showcase, or a presentation, or a fashion statement, or a statement of intent, or everything rolled into one.

For this I think 'The Gate', both the "single" and video, is a beautiful thing.

Yet I deal with the same sort of partner Jordan deals with :) Still trying to decide which track on the new one is best to trick her into saying "this is much better". Perhaps I will try 4 the next time.

i like this album but as with any Bjork album since Volta, I play it a few times and will inevitably never put it on again

finally hearing this album. looooove it! "Arisen My Senses" is so nice and crunchy. really love this arrangement. the harp and detuned string samples over that glitching explosion. so sick! i like the skittering drums, i like drums that click like a ticking bike gear (Cornelius uses this trick a lot, the drum hit being delayed and that delay getting shorter and shorter exponentially, so that hits naturally yet mechanically become a drum roll).

i like "Utopia" a lot, it makes me think of gamelan music played with flutes. this really sounds like rainforest music, this album.

"Body Memory" this is some serious primal cave person sex music. it is like having sex on mushrooms. zooming into the atomic, cellular rhythms, the pulse of the universe, that god shaped hole.

So many lovely moments on 'Utopia'. . . but I don't know if moments sustain it for 70 minutes. I don't think anyone pining for Bjork "songs" is dismissing her more compositional, erudite, playful, non-pop tendencies. I think we just loved how wonderfully she married those tendencies to melodies and song-form where both aspects reinforced the others. For me, after the all-time perfect 10 top-5 records of 'Homogenic,' 'Medulla' is my second favorite--and it's an album dismissed as an experimental gimmick ("all vocals") but that was really her last great collection of songs and melodies.

She seems disinterested enough in melody (rather, just sort of Bjork-note phrasings) and song-form on this newest record that I almost just wish she'd make a full-on experimental, instrumental record along the lines of 'Drawing Restraint' but with her full talents behind it. It makes me sad that someone whose voice has moved me so over so many years, becomes just another piece in a rather busy but too-even mesh. I want to love it--but I agree with Fridgo above: I loved that mix she did instantly, but 'Utopia' I'm afraid will never grow into love for me.

She's still probably my single favorite living musician, so I'll follow her and give everything she does a chance.

This version of "Anchor Song," around 2:35, has literally given me goosebumps hundreds of times. . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgiI2gm-RIs

i love "Features Creatures" it sounds like Bjork playing a sampling keyboard while singing this awesome song and then clanging a bunch of chimes while messing w echo pedals and the whole time she can still sing amazingly <3 and is this a mellotron going on at the end w the minimalist fumbling note flurry? really lovely lofi playing there. this is so fun to listen to! <3

"Losss" is one of the best song titles ever.

the song is pretty cool too (Pink Floyd could have played this on "Ummagumma"). is this more mellotron in here? or real flutes?

really loved this album. it feels very healing. very warm. there is a lot of singing and vocals on here, maybe more than since "Medulla" the album that was nothing but vocals. but not just vocals, there are lots of flutes, lots of wind instruments. lots of breath and life. her voice is still really good and sounds as great as did it 25 years ago.

i don't pine for the pop songs of old, she has already done "Big Time Sensuality", she has already done "Hyperballad". that was decades ago. i really love just hearing her sing and play and layer her vocals and whatever sounds that she finds interesting and/or generates with her collaborators.

if i want to hear "Human Behavior" that song and MTV music video will always exist. the music video with the Ren and Stimpy guy will always exist. there is no need for her to try and recapture that pop audience because it is entirely differently from how things were in the 90s.

also it is probably the last thing in the world on her mind for her personally irt her career. i think she enjoys working w the various musicians and doing VR things and art stuff and that is what brings her happiness, not some gold record. thankfully even thought it is 2017 i can't picture Bjork doing American Idol or being featured on a Justin Beiber or Maroon 5 song (Lady Gaga and Bjork collab would probably be super fucking lit tho). she is still doing her thing and it's beautiful. her voice is still amazing and 100% can hit some high notes.

this was a wonderful record to live inside of. it was like being in a healing waterfall located in some laser jungle with holographic insects. it fits the album cover perfectly!

i love that bjork always represents her truth on every album. her concerns in life are obviously not the same as when she did her earlier pop hits, and this album really hits on her fears and hopes as a mother, reconciliation of longtime love lost and the joy of a new relationship. I love it as a flipside to Vulnicura.

great posts Adam btw

It's a dumb little thing but she does all her own arrangements these days and they are inspired

I really love the album, too. Initially I wasn't super impressed by "The Gate" - I like it in the context of the album, makes total sense now, but as a lead single it didn't pack enough oomph for me, I guess (even on her later-period albums the lead singles were pretty cachy e.g. "Earth Intruders" or "Crystalline", so I suppose I was expecting something like that?). "Arisen", "Body Memory" and "Loss" are currently my favourites.

Her flute arrangements are fantastic and really showcase her growth as a composer/arranger over the year. fgti is right, she's been doing her own arrangements totally on her own starting with Medúlla - choirs, strings, brass, now woodwinds. I'm pretty sure last time she had outside help was Vince Mendoza orchestrating some stuff on Vespertine

BTW "Features Creatures" is her singing over Sarah Hopkins' track that she found on some compilation of musicians who create their own instruments.

Joining the 'pro' lobby for this LP. And puzzled by the "where are the songs?" complaints when "Saint" exists.

i love the arrangements here! this is a very warm record, lots of acoustic sounds, flutes, layrered vocals. still the cool crunchy industrial electronic beats and stuff. she has always loved the industrial esp. "Army of Me" and of course her NIN tattoo.

i really think that breath or wind is a strong element for thing record (Bjork of The Wild). it feels really alive because of that. also it makes me want to go to Iceland so bad and see the lush volcanic super active natural beauty of it all. very refreshing!

Tried a handful of times to listen to this since it came out and kept getting distracted/bored. Today for the first time I played it all the way through. I begrudge Bjork absolutely nothing, but I'm just not stimulated by this one. Not feeling any desire to try it again.

kind of agree w/others that i think that her voice is always so compelling and she has a great ear for sounds and arrangements but doesn't feel like there's a lot "there" underneath it in terms of songs

Still pretty good! But six tracks does me just fine.

I haven't listened to this yet but I wonder if the comments about there not being any songs there are tied to her increased tendency to write songs that have overaching structure in terms of verse/chorus/what have you but melodically wander all over the place within those sections. This has been a hallmark of her style since the beginning but it's felt to me that it's become even more pronounced over the past (looks up Medulla's release date) 13 years; it's certainly what kept me from getting into Biophilia for a very long time.

It seems pretty clear that pop songwriting is not the game she's playing on her last few albums. But since her voice is her main instrument and there are lyrics, the format is uncomfortably similar to, y'know', "songs". But maybe it's better to think of these as electronic tracks with a voice singing words in the lead?

ha xp

hi-5

I mean, I guess the only reason we keep bringing this up is because she has things like "Hyperballad" and "Come To Me" in her past.

btw I'm playing this now and I like "Arisen My Senses" more than anything else I've heard post-Medulla

Tried a handful of times to listen to this since it came out and kept getting distracted/bored. Today for the first time I played it all the way through. I begrudge Bjork absolutely nothing, but I'm just not stimulated by this one. Not feeling any desire to try it again.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Friday, December 1, 2017

my reaction too, as I finish my fourth play

If I accept this as the second half of a Nu AmErykah style diptych with Vulnicura, I am 100 percent on board.

what if I give you a salted peanut

i'm certainly not saying she has to write like 3.5 minute v/c/v/c/bridge/c type songs or anything, not at all

songs can be whatever if they grab and keep my attention i guess

i like the way it sounds tho, it's def possible it will grow on me

I think it's going to be best dipping in for a couple tracks at a time, not as a complete listen (it's extremely cohesive, but just...a lot).

I skipped Vulnicura because of how hard it was for me to get into Biophilia; I am probably going to go back to it as these first two songs are glorious and reminding me why I was obsessed with her in the 90s.

i like Utopia a lot, and i enjoy her more abstract melodies and structures.

i have to admit, though, that after listening to Utopia yesterday, spotify "radio" kicked in and played "Unison" off of Vespertine and it felt like such a euphoric lift when the slightly more conventional structure kicked in with the beat. the bjork albums of the last several years sometimes hint at the possibility of tapping into pop structures, but always seems to turn away before getting too close. i do miss it, on occasion.

i'm certainly not saying she has to write like 3.5 minute v/c/v/c/bridge/c type songs or anything, not at all

My point/observation is more that she's staying pretty close to that type of structure on a macro level but has a adopted a wandering anything-goes approach within those sections, with usually the chorus as the only piece that retains repeated structure in her melody line. This threw up a big barrier for me on Biophilia that I literally only just got through this past year; am finding the musical arrangement on Utopia a lot more engaging overall.

If you managed to get into Biophilia I'd say you will definitely get into Vulnicura.

I get the idea that Bjork is not really going for "songs" in the typical sense. But then again why is everything mostly 3-5 minutes long? Like it's still all presented in a typical album-full-of-songs package. If her real intention is to make some kind of big overarching experience I'd like to see her go all the way and make something that really breaks away from expectations.

Originally gave it a grudging duty listen, the last three having mostly left me cold, and I keep coming back to it, and getting into it more. What a pleasant surprise.

don't know whether i LOVE it yet or not, but i'm pleasantly tickled by how the arrangements on here seem to refer back to "fourth world musics" tropes. it feels like a nice complement to the visible cloaks album from early this year.

cover art for this album is horrendous

the first two tracks on this are decent but then it quickly loses me - 75 minutes of Bjork at her densest and most abstract is far too much for me

Vespertine is still my favourite album of hers for the way it successfully bridges her 'pop' side with her then-new more abstract side, especially in the second half.

Wow, this serpentwithfeet remix of 'Blissing Me' adds an amazing hook. Would love to hear a longer collab between them.

A couple days ago i listened to this big folder of every bjork b-side up through Vespertine and my god was that a good time

i have folder envy

cool bjork mash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2HByXNKBwY

Recruiting: POLL Neon Like -- ILM artist poll #88 -- BJÖRK (voting open until April 27, 2018)

This album is very good

The tour for Utopia started last night in Reykjavik, BTW, with the stage set up as a rotating floral vaginal court (of course), lined plants, with footage of birds projected on the screens, and Björk being backed by seven dancing flautists, a drummer, an electronic person doubling as a trombone player, and a harpist. Theatrical as expected! The show is scheduled to tour for the next two years, so here's hoping I manage to catch it somewhere.

https://i.imgur.com/rPTMQe2.jpg

going to see her at primavera and this is what I wanted to hear

looks like her older set list tracks this time around are “Thunderbolt”, “Pleasure is all Mine”, “Notget”, and “The Anchor Song”

Is zeena parkins the harpist?