Björk’s tenth studio album, ‘Fossora,’ can be heavy, prickly, and fierce. But it’s worth the effort.
‘Fossora’ continues the songwriter, producer and multimedia visionary’s lifelong project of connecting personal experiences to the larger natural and cosmic processes. Five years after Utopia, it’s a determined, airy album featuring birds and flute sounds. “Utopia” A purposeful, gravity-defying rebound, a contrast to Björk’s wounded, heartbreaking, string-laden 2015 album Vulnicura, “Fossora” is yet another self of Element’s direction. It’s a conscious change.
Derived from the Latin word for “bargain,” “fossola” values life and death, joy and suffering, the fleshy physicality of romantic and parental love. As a musical foundation, Björk’s new tracks often feature bass clarinet, trombone and other low-range instruments (the flute also makes an appearance).
Björk’s production and arrangement on “Fossora” showcases her most blatant esotericism. In other words, pop, rock and dance are closer to contemporary chamber music than her music. As usual, her melodies are bold and declarative, filled with passion and suspense. But on “Fossora,” Björk doesn’t necessarily center those melodies as hooks. She’s also collaborated with Indonesian electronic producer Gabber Modus Operandi on a few tracks, but she’s not aiming for dance floor beats.
Her new songs often fluctuate in tempo organically, like breathing. And more than ever, Björk places her voice within a rich musical ecosystem that likely includes a tangle of instrumental polyphony and layered her vocals, with every element of the mix claiming diversity. I’m here.
“Fossora” songs contain remembrance, self-esteem, and hard-earned connections and updates. “Obstacles only teach us / So we can merge deeper,” declares Björk “ovule,” A dignified consideration that emphasizes the sense of solidarity between the individual and the digital with the trombone.
For much of the album, 56-year-old Björk ponders the death of her mother Hildur Luna Hauksdottir in 2018 and her own generational role as a child and mother. (Björk’s children, Sindri and Isadora, appear in her album’s backing vocals.) On “Sorrowful Soil,” Björk makes a prismatic yet cool scientific reflection on motherhood. Summons an overlapping symphonic choir for Or three nests.continue “ancestor” Gamelan-like gongs and string ensembles overshadow Björk’s vocal lines, recalling the moments of her mother’s life and death.
But the album also recognizes the stubborn, essential life force of love, hope, and the growth of subterranean fungi as biological analogues. Images of album graphics and opening songs, “Atopos” (Greek for “out of place” or “abnormal”) is full of mushroom imagery, and the title song of “Fossora” features neoclassical Stravinsky-like woodwinds, ricocheting vocals, and sporadic It’s an unlikely amalgamation of brutal electronic sounds. — “For millions of years we have been spores.” On the song titled “Fungal City,” amid clarinet countermelody and tendrils of pizzicato strings, Björk enthuses a new romance and sings, “His exuberant optimism also happens to be my faith.”
That optimism is by no means naive. On “Victimhood,” it accompanies the album’s darkest sonority—his six basses her clarinet huffing the lowest note to a cool-ticking beat—and nearly swallows Björk’s vocals. “I sacrificed myself to protect us,” she sings. find it. Then her celebratory flute greets her with “Allow.” This is a hymn to nurturing as healing. “Allow allow allow you to growth,” she sings. “Let me grow.”
The album concludes with “Her Mother’s House”. This is an abstract, lullaby-like song that imagines a child’s room as the room of a mother’s mind. The multi-tracked vocals of Björk and her daughter intertwine, singing, “The more I love, the more you live.” They find their evolutionary purpose in emotional bonding.
“Fossora” is not meant to be a crowd pleaser. It’s hard to imagine these studio fantasies on stage (although Björk may find a way). But Björk’s inner world is vast.
björk
“Fossola”
(one little independent)