It's been three years since Björk premiered the maximalist Cornucopia in New York, a psychedelic cautionary tale about the environment that climate change is constantly reacting to (the current tour is scheduled for next year in Japan). While this project examines our troubled planet through a macro lens, his new album Fossora zooms in Google Map-style, looking at the earth and the people in the room, measuring the distances between them. The soundscape is still vast - fantastical, as eerie as it is familiar, filled with otherworldly arrangements, tectonic rhythms and brutal melodies reminiscent of his native Iceland. The artist described it as something from his "mushroom" album, using metaphors about digging up dirt. In short, this is Björk at her Björk best.
This means, as always, that he asks you to meet him on his own terms, which here include a clarinet sextet, a battalion of flutes, a choir of new Icelandic music and fierce hardcore rhythms created in collaboration with Gabber Modus Operandi (GMO ): , Indonesian electronic a band that mixes "great authentic Balinese [sic] beats and techno," as Björk described them on her Instagram. Fosora also insists on occupying the territory. "Atopos," the album's opener and first single, argues against the decline in music quality among lo-fi streaming; in one article, he asks listeners to "play louder" because of the "enormous importance of the bass in this song." The sound is harsh from the laptop speakers, but the sweet speaker will transport you to a warehouse rave at 5am. " 1990, as the singer tries to mend a broken relationship, perhaps between a son and a father or between two lovers. However, the lines "our differences don't matter" and "if we don't fall in love / we'll explode to destruction" also suggest that B York is moving towards a human race ready to be destroyed unless they unite and cooperate.
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The album's title refers to the Latin fossore , one who digs, and it feels like Björk is digging into her past, musically and personally, which she also did with her new full-length podcast Sonic.Symbolism . The album's arrangements for bass clarinet recall the layered reeds of "The Anchor Song," a highlight of his 30-year-old debut, Debut . the heavyweights return with "My Army" and Volta 's Strike Attack; Vulnikuri's arrangements are for strings and choirs, and the teenage student loves composer Olivier Messiaen. Fosora also delves into family roots. "Sorrowful Soil," a stirring choral piece accompanied by a single bass line, and "Ancestress," a brilliant Indonesian-Icelandic chamber piece, pay tribute to Björk's mother, the late climate activist Hildur Runa Hauksdóttir, interspersed with eulogies. more complex feelings. The latter gives his son to Sindra Eldon. The album ends with "Her Mother's House," an ethereal duet with her daughter Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney about love, "matriarchal architecture," the empty nest, and "the four chambers of the heart."
Like everything Björk has done as a solo artist, Fossora is her visuals, accompanying videos and other visuals as maximalist as Cornucopia , filled with the same haunting imagination reflected in the music. Sometimes melodies and arrangements are shared. But the album's "bass world" has taken root, and it's another step forward in the art of gymnastics, evoking clubbing in the same way that Beyoncé and Drake's recent albums have, albeit in perhaps the most unusual of clubs. It's a welcome, necessarily happy answer to a few years of incarceration (the remixes are supposedly intoxicating) and therapy to prepare for the sequel. As Björk says in "Atopos" as the song reaches its peak, "hope is a muscle" and needs to be exercised.
Editor's Note: You may have noticed that we have removed stars from our reviews. If you're a dedicated 2022 music fan, your opinion won't be determined by a random number. We'll tell you right away (with a few new tags) when a new album becomes a must-have for you, or, in rare cases, an instant classic. After that, our reviewers will help you make a hell of a decision.
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