Björk deploys on Fossora contemporary chamber music sometimes tinged with techno that doesn’t come with instructions.
Updated yesterday at 3:04 p.m.
Björk hasn’t been expected to reinvent pop for a long time. She has been moving away from this territory since Medulla (2004), offering increasingly conceptual albums. Fossora (grave or rather “the one who digs”, according to the interpretation of the artist), is no exception: it is a reflection on the roots (family and what connects us to others and to ecosystems) led by a composer who refuses the easy way.
The image that sums up the album is that of the mycelium, the invisible root network of fungi that contributes to the health of the soil and even allows trees to communicate and exchange nutrients. Mycelia is also the title of one of the instrumental pieces of Fossora which echoes this idea: it is made of dotted melodies, evoking both the internet network and the links it allows to create or maintain.
The adequacy between form and substance is always eloquent on Fossora. Since Björk talks about transmission and filiation – a reflection visibly nourished by the recent disappearance of her mother -, we find it logical that she invited her son Sindri (on Ancestress) and her daughter Isadora (on Her Mother’s House). She also deploys her music in networks of melodies and timbres that add up more than they merge, forming abstract paintings, but less cerebral than sensitive.
We suspected it listening to the first extracts: Björk offers nothing pop, in the sense that his new songs are not made to hang on the first listen. It’s not even “cinematic” music. Fossora is closer to a form of contemporary chamber music, which would deny neither techno (which appears here in a very secondary role) nor the processing of sound.
The wind instruments occupy a large space in these pieces which however have nothing of air. They even constitute the background of this disc, the case on which Björk places her characteristic song. The sound environment is also enhanced with strings which bring warmth — and even a little lyricism — to this music made of brushstrokes rather than continuous lines.
Fossora is not an “easy” album. Those hoping for Björk to come back in her 90s way better skip it. This disc will not play in the 5 to 7 either and it is not necessarily the kind of disc that we listen to again “for fun” on a Sunday afternoon. It is a work with a O capital letter, of a demanding experience without being dry, which digs with a unique acuity the complexity of the links which unite us. It’s not comfortable, but it’s rich and beautiful.
CONTEMPORARY ART-POP
Fossora
Bjork
One Little Independent