Bjork - 2017 album

"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?

^ It's Katie Buckley this time:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhfIYMfnUGX/
(She also plays harp on the album.)

She was on Jools tonight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W60dqZCEpiY

o_0

Lucrecia Martel to direct new @bjork show in #newYorkCity @TheShedNY #argentina #theshowofthecentury https://t.co/EFKpRy3fgg pic.twitter.com/np5LT2Ti4x

— Cinema Tropical (@CinemaTropical) February 5, 2019

She has just put out a video for Tabula Rasa and it's just astounding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYbZw04ba78

The staging of Utopia/Cornucopia at NYC's The Shed looks incredible.

https://www.bjork.fr/IMG/jpg/09-05-2019-bjork-cornucopia-the-shed-ny_20_.jpg
https://www.bjork.fr/IMG/jpg/09-05-2019-bjork-cornucopia-the-shed-ny_12_.jpg
https://www.bjork.fr/IMG/jpg/09-05-2019-bjork-cornucopia-the-shed-ny_32.jpg
https://www.bjork.fr/IMG/jpg/12-05-2019-bjork-cornucopia-the-shed-ny_17_.jpg
https://www.bjork.fr/IMG/jpg/12-05-2019-bjork-cornucopia-the-shed-ny_9_.jpg
https://www.bjork.fr/IMG/jpg/12-05-2019-bjork-cornucopia-the-shed-ny_16_.jpg

Setlist:

01 The Gate
02 Utopia
03 Show Me Forgiveness
04 Arisen My Senses
05 Venus as a Boy
06 Claimstaker
07 Isobel
08 Blissing Me

09 Body Memory
10 Hidden Place
11 Mouth's Cradle
12 Features Creatures
13 Courtship
14 Pagan Poetry
15 Loss
16 Sue Me
17 Tabula Rasa

18 Future Forever
19 Notget

tickets starting at $300

I repent. Courtship is a banger and Future Forever is one of her most gorgeous songs.

This is really good! Turns out the vocal really shines with production that's a little more inside-the-lines.

https://youtu.be/AEdsAQ3GzFk

The Knife one is amazing too, but more for the music than for elevating the song imo

https://youtu.be/3Ghjaf_V6xw

Last night Björk performed the first of her 'Björk Orkestral' acoustic live streaming shows from Reykjavík - the theme was strings (the other three are choir/organ, brass/flutes/harp, and chamber ensemble). It was very good, even though she seemed quite shy/nervous during the first half of the show.

https://i.imgur.com/4g4kikO.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/R3mVNvm.jpg

The setlist:

01 Stonemilker
02 Aurora
03 I've Seen It All
04 Sun in My Mouth
05 You've Been Flirting Again
06 Isobel
07 Hyperballad
08 Harm of Will
09 Bachelorette
10 Unison

So no new songs but a new album is rumoured for late spring/early summer 2022 release.

'Björk Orkestral'

more like Björkestral imo

that looks amazing, and i would love to see any one of those 4 shows!