This album is hard to qualify without the images it is supposed to go along with. But I wouldn't be me if I did not try. I will mix it with the little I know of the movie. I know it features Björk as an actress too, or maybe she is just an art object for Matthew Barney to move around, I don't know.
I am curious to find out who sparked who on this project. Did Björk and Matthew spur eachother on? Did he find images to go along with the music or the other way around?

For starters, the album is a Björk album and it is not. The sounds, the voices; all very Björk, the form the are poured in; movie. Björk seems to have formed her music to images, using small sounds (as in Shimenawa) to draw people closer, using big sounds to make cinematic points (Hunter Vessel and Vessel Shimenawa).

The album, to me, has specific ties to a few of her previous albums. Earthsounds, like on Homogenic, the soundscape-ism of Medúlla and the intimacy of Vespertine, albeit instrumental at places.

The first song is sung by Will Oldham, a beautiful song fitting his voice, yet it lifts him a bit into Björk territory, which is exciting and strange.

I just listened to Storm, which is beautiful in many ways, invoking Homogenic in some ways.

I am now moving into Holographic Entrypoint, which uses Japanese vocals by a man (whoms name I do not know, will find out for you later) and seemingly, Japanese instrumentations.

People who know about my love for Japanese/Chinese music and theatre, will know this is immediately a hit with me.

More thoughts later!


[Edited 7/28/05 2:28am]

HamsterHuey said:

If that pic is a metaphore it is NOT very subtle

PANDURITO said:

If that was an attempt at a joke, it wasn't really funny.

So, I only listened to it once.

Gratitude is sung by Will Oldham.
Only three songs seem to feature Björk's singing voice (Bath, Storm and Cetacea). Björk's voice on Bath and the form it was given reminds me of Amphibian.

I love this album way more than Medúlla, let's call it love at first hear.
[Edited 7/28/05 2:28am]

I preordered it from a UK shop and still haven't received it

HamsterHuey said:

It's Will Oldham singing. Altho I have to agree with you that
he sounds kind of Damien Rice-like on this track.

I absolutely love the idea that they used for Gratitude of
the people writing MacArthur letters to thank him after he
lifted the ban on whaling.

It seems absurd for something like that to happen so soon
after the US nuked Hiroshima, yet it did.

My favorit line in this song is:


Dear General MacArthur,

With your permission
I offer wishes of good health,
During this heat
That burns anything.


which has such bouble entendre, since it could just mean the
heat of summer during a time of starvation.
but more likely it means the heat set of by the nuke which'd
been dropped on Hiroshima so shortly before.

One thing I noticed that struck me as a bit strange is that
either one of the songs that was on the original soundtrack
was deleted or got a new name at the very last stage before
release.

There was a song called "Petrolatum" on the tracklist for a
while and it was also up on the site as a short sample with
all the other songs from the project.

It's too bad I deleted those mp3 files again because I would
have loved to hear if "Petrolatum" was indeed dropped from
the soundtrack or simply given another name.



on this special page about the album there is still a mention
of "Petrolatum" which they seem to have missed when they did
some editing and changed the tracklist and such on the page!!

http://unit.bjork.com/specials/dr9/


"Petrolatum" is mentioned in peach colored letters in the text
just above the picture of Björk in a bath with lemmons or what
I percieve as lemmons anyway lol.

It's interesting.

I've just noticed that the bit about "Petrolatum"
mentions Mark Bell as providing the bass for it,
now comparing the credits on the DR9 page, it is
easy to see that Bell only features on one track,
which is "Ambergris March" and I know for a fact
that that song was also on the original tracklist

So I guess that does make "Petrolatum" an outtake

I wonder why it was nixed.

ok. did some research and came across the original
tracklisting for the album:

1. gratitude
2. petrolatum
3. pearl
4. bath
5. hunter vessel
6. shimenawa
7. storm
8. holographic entrypoint
9. ambergris march
10. cetace
11. antarctic return

so, that would mean it got nixed in favour of the
track "Vessel Chimenawa" which is the only track
on the present album that did not appear on this
one.

however, since "Vessel Chimenawa" has no Mark Bell
involvement at all, it does indeed appear like she
took "Petrolatum" off the album and it's now just
an outtake until she decides to slap it on the back
of a possible single. which I'm sure she will in
due time

IstenSzek said:

Totally fooled me! Could have SWORN...

Wow. Hehehe edited.
[Edited 7/28/05 2:29am]

ik ben weer een beetje doorgedraaid toen ik zag
dat er misschien een outtake van dit album is..



typisch iets voor mij om dan weer gewoon 4 keer
te posten over zoiets. verbale diaree. daar heb
ik wel vaker last van.

IstenSzek said:

Geeft toch niet?

Ambergris March is my first fave.
This often changes after listening to it a few times.
[Edited 7/28/05 2:51am]

HamsterHuey said:

And Storm.

I love Storm.
[Edited 7/28/05 2:51am]

HamsterHuey said:

www.bjork.com has answers, of course.

"After doing the research with all the vocals on Medúlla, I was very curious to take that further to a place that was not narrative. Then, when Matthew explained that the film happens on the ocean," she says, pinching her nose and holding her breath, "I was curious to make vocal patterns that were sort of oceanic. My music is very much about structure, whereas Matthew is much more abstract. I have to have a map and a compass to see the . nal point before I start the journey, and then I can meet 10 lions or whatever."

The enire interview;
http://www.telegraph.co.u...jork21.xml

Björk's latest album, a film-track collaboration with her partner Matthew Barney, is the strangest she has ever made. She talks to Jonathan Wingate about art and pop

"I'm a little bit hung-over today, but I'd say it's only a five-bar hangover, so I'm not feeling too bad," mumbles Björk with a guilty grin as she grabs a bottle of water and slumps on to the deep sofa in the Soho Hotel.

We are here to talk about her boyfriend Matthew Barney's new art-house film, Drawing Restraint 9, although Björk's head feels a little too fuzzy to wax lyrical at this time in the morning.

"Trying to even start to explain the film is kind of challenging," she giggles, "but with my little alcoholpickled brain, it's really tough. I guess that's the point with the way Matthew sets it up, because there is no story. You just have to sit there and enjoy it, a bit like nature. The film has a narrative, but a really abstract one. It's not your average Hollywood movie, let's put it that way."

The film represents the first collaboration between Björk and Barney, two of the most innovative characters in music and art. Björk makes a brief on-screen appearance alongside Barney, as well as providing the soundtrack, which is undoubtedly the most leftfield music she has ever released. If you thought last year's a cappella album, Medúlla, was weird, Drawing Restraint 9 ups the kook factor to another level.

"After doing the research with all the vocals on Medúlla, I was very curious to take that further to a place that was not narrative. Then, when Matthew explained that the film happens on the ocean," she says, pinching her nose and holding her breath, "I was curious to make vocal patterns that were sort of oceanic. My music is very much about structure, whereas Matthew is much more abstract. I have to have a map and a compass to see the . nal point before I start the journey, and then I can meet 10 lions or whatever."

A couple of years after she first burst into earshot as a solo artist in 1993 with her Debut album, an astonishing box of tricks that captured the zeitgeist and made Björk one of the most famous faces in the world, she seemed to have become a star almost by accident.

"Yeah, I suppose I did feel like I was in the wrong job," says Björk. "You know when you're in the gang at the back of the class, and you're wearing black clothes, and suddenly you're being treated like the cheerleader? And it's like: wait a minute. I'm not the one with the long blonde hair and the big boobs. You got it wrong. But I have to say, just to try it on for a few years was a laugh."

At the end of the 1990s, after a series of high-profile relationships seemingly played out in the gossip pages, Björk quit the constant glare of London's spotlight for the relative anonymity of New York to retrieve some semblance of a private life. Since then, she has guarded her privacy so fiercely that her collaboration with Barney comes as something of a surprise.

"I guess we never would have done this when we started going out, but now, five years into it, it's really natural and effortless," Björk beams. "It's not such a big deal, because we've already got the foundation, and nobody can mess with it. I knew we'd planted a lot of seeds over the last five years, and it felt like the right harvest time."

Barney is best known for The Cremaster Cycle, a surreal sequence of five films shot over 10 years which became the subject of a recent Guggenheim retrospective. Matthew Barney may be the name on every hip lip on the Big Apple's avant-garde art scene, but Björk's involvement is sure to bring Drawing Restraint 9 to the attention of a whole new audience outside the art world.

"Our working relationship is hard to explain," she says. "I guess what I like about Matthew is that he's very down to earth. Being an artist is a very functional kind of job. He would say: 'Aggressive ship', and I'd go and write an aggressive ship track. I'm translating his ideas into sound. He just gives me hints. Because we've known each other for a while now, the majority of it happened without us having to talk."

Björk's background in Reykjavik's punk and DIY art scene has stood her in good stead for her latest challenge, and she sees no reason to differentiate between highbrow and lowbrow.

"I've done lots of projects in Iceland that people abroad don't know about, so doing this project didn't feel so new to me. Being this 'singer-songwriter' is only part of me. It's all music at the end of the day. Iceland is so isolated that there's no such thing as high and low art. You have the guy who plays cello in the symphony orchestra, his brother is in a heavy metal band, and together they go to their niece's art opening. It's all very working class, because there's no hierarchy there. I'm probably a good example of it. To do a disco song one day and then do Matthew's project the next day is no big deal for me.

"Right now there is a big wave in visual art going on in Iceland," she continues. "I'm working with an artist called Gabriella Fridriksdottir. She has her own sort of universe happening, which I personally always find quite appealing," laughs Björk.

"She's exploring the emotional spectrum in a very conscious way, and there are a lot of similarities in the way we work."

As Björk set out on her sometimes strange but always compelling career path, she took her music to places nobody had ever even dreamt of before. Albums such as Post, Homogenic and Vespertine became increasingly experimental, yet the media remained interested, and the public carried on buying Björk's music. Her adventures in recording have never been more daring or modernistic, yet Björk clearly still thinks her music is an equal mix pop and art.

"People think that I'm too eccentric, so it's never going to work. I've always loved pop and leftfield music. My record company thought that Debut wasn't going to sell. I said: I don't care. I really have to do this or I'll go insane. You've just got to do what you do. I came from a punk background, so there was no way that I was ever going to compromise with my music. I have this utopian view that the common person – like your gran, or the guy who works in the sandwich shop – actually wants an adventure, to hear something they've never heard before. I might seem leftfield, but I'm really not trying to be weird, you know."

Bjö

rk said:

It'sa bit dificult album to listen...But it's grows on you!

HamsterHuey said:

i like! it looks a lot like the art on her greatest hits/live box/family tree/etc...is that the artist who did all of her cover art?

Anxiety said:

Yes, is why I posted the pic.

HamsterHuey said:

Those two are very nice! I'm liking the album a lot
this far. Listened to her other albums on shuffle 4
a bit yesterday and I've noticed that "Medulla" has
grown on me a lot more too.
I kept thinking "so uhm, I thought there were a lot
more songs on this album that I didn't like".
But except for "Ancestors" I can stomach it all now
and love every minute of it!

IstenSzek said:

ZWAAI!

Nathan and I listened to it and agree that it needs the film to tie it all togehter. There are some beautiful songs and interesting concepts ~ I'll have to listen again without distraction to give any further impression.

MoonSongs said:

It will be insteresting to see the visuals, but as I am an experienced listener to soundtrack music, I have no problems with the goofiness of the instrumentation.

As I wrote in my review, I am really fond of Chinese/Japanese music, which is to many westerners kind of unsettling, using a kind of dramatics and vocalisation that is weird if you do not know the language.

Have you ever seen Farwell To My Concubine? It is a wonderful, touching story about the friendship between two boys that are trained for the threatre. Music and performance is an intergral (?) part of the story and it brings you a bit closer to the kind of music as presented on Holographic Entrypoint.

I myself was alone while listening and the album had me crying at Ambergris March, the third song. That just cut through me like a knife, emotional sod I am .