Back to basics and geysers for Björk

(Paris) Björk likes contrasts: after a previous airy album, Utopiathe Icelandic returns with Fossoraconnected to the land of his ancestors and reviving the bubbling of the beginnings.

Everything is said when the former Sugarcubes singer announces her new opus on her social networks at the end of August, released this Friday. “Each album always starts with a feeling that I try to sculpt into sound, this time that feeling lands on the earth and buries my feet in the ground. »

In 2017, Utopiacarried by flutes and harps, spread a feeling of elevation, as if to gain height after a painful divorce.

Fossora, a name taken from a Latin term that can be translated as “digging”, connects this time to the pulsations of an Icelandic earth where his mother rests. Died in 2018, she is mentioned in two titles (Ancestressi.e. Ancestor in the feminine and Sorrowful SoilSore Earth).

This parent was an environmental activist and it is now up to Björk’s children to take care of Icelandic nature. His son Sindri is present in the backing vocals on Ancestress and her daughter Ísadóra on those of Her Mother’s House (His mother’s house).

Musically, the tranquility that could envelop certain pieces of Fossorawith wind and string instruments, is jostled by a rough rhythm like the earth’s crust.

Thus, the sextet of clarinets that we hear on Atopos, the opening track, leads to a false lead. No, Björk is not extending the acoustic orchestral tour that took place at La Seine Musicale in the Paris region last June.

Because from the 3^e minute of this title, the rhythm becomes more martial. We clearly distinguish here a gabber color, a branch of hardcore techno. Like a hammering from the forges of Vulcan, a Roman god associated with fire and volcanoes.

Wild nature “

Synthetic strikes shaped by sequencers also punctuate Fungal City Where Trölla-Gabba (Joking troll in Icelandic, but the word “gabba” also sounds like “gabber”).

We find in Fossora the abundance of an album like Homogeneousartistic summit reached in 1997. 25 years ago, Björk already swept away the idea of ​​a nature that would only be romantic.

The 50-year-old explains it in detail in a series of podcasts, Bjork: Sonic Symbolismbrought online to escort the release of Fossora. She analyzes in episodes of less than 50 minutes each of her albums. His confessions about Homogeneous also fit like a glove to Fossora.

“I hate clichés about Iceland and being compared to an elf,” she highlights. The actress of Dance in the dark refuses any “sentimentalism” attached to a nature that she sees above all as “wild”. For Homogeneous, she wanted music with “volcanic beats, more techno”. This is also the case here, especially for the title track Fossora.

For the cover, Björk thwarted the trap of convenience by dismissing the image of volcanoes to celebrate the Icelandic land or roots to illustrate family ties. Dressed like a pythiaheroic-fantasyhis feet melt into magical mushrooms.

This iconography summons the spirit of these fantastic tales where forest creatures live in mushroom houses. Which refers to the piece Fungal City (Fungal Town). By association of ideas — that of hallucinogenic mushrooms — Björk also kneads a psychedelic and hippie imagination. After her parents’ divorce, the musician had spent part of her childhood in her mother’s hippie community.