August 13, 2004
Björk performed at the Olympics Opening Ceremony singing "Oceania", a song she wrote for the event, which will appear on her new a cappella album "Medùlla" to be released on August 31th.
Belfast Telegraph
37-year-old Björk talks to James McNair about her new a cappella album, Medúlla.
Perhaps the most ambitious work in a solo career festooned with pioneering records, the album relies on the myriad textures and timbres of the human voice. There was a moment of epiphany as regards the record's direction. Picture the scene: Björk, eight months pregnant with Isadora, who is now almost two, is recording her own drum overdubs. Think Meg White with a large bump. Suddenly, it strikes her that what she's doing is superfluous. Beginning a process of aural archaeology, the singer first removes some rhythm tracks, then excavates successive layers of instrumentation until her buried vocal melodies start to glint afresh. At this point, Björk says, she hit on the idea of doing an album almost entirely a cappella. "The only other rule", she adds, "was for it not to sound like Manhattan Transfer or Bobby McFerrin."
Like 2001's Vespertine, Björk's wonderful take on introspection and domestic intimacy, Medúlla's title chimes with its content. "Basically, it means 'marrow' in medical language, in Latin," she says. "Not just your bone marrow, but marrow in the kidneys and marrow in your hair, too. It's about getting to the essence of something, and with this album being all vocals, that made sense.
"Something in me wanted to leave out civilisation," she continues, "to rewind to before it all happened and work out, 'Where is the human soul? What if we do without civilisation and religion and patriotism, without the stuff that has gone wrong?' I was going to call the album Ink, because I wanted it to be like that black, 5,000-year-old blood that's inside us all; an ancient spirit that's passionate and dark and survives."
An entirely a cappella album sounds as if it might outstay its welcome, but Medúlla's eclecticism and cherry-picked guest list helps to make for an absorbing, often thrilling listen. Produced by Björk and recorded in 12 locations, including New York, Iceland, Venice and the Canary Islands, the album has contributions from the Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis, the Japanese beatbox ace Dokaka, the esteemed Robert Wyatt, Rahzel from The Roots and the former Faith No More front man Mike Patton.
"I liked all of us to make any special noises we could," says Björk, her hybrid accent a wonder of timbre in itself. "Sometimes there's a kind of weave or blend where nobody is more important than anybody else; other times, I wanted each singer to have a sort of solo."
Listen out, then, for angelic and demonic sounds; for erotic, exotic and comedic sounds; for human takes on insects and birds; and drum-loops, whistling, joyous abandon and moments of sublime grace. There is also a typically Björkian blurring of eras: just as Vespertine featured handmade music-boxes and the cutting-edge electronica of the San Francisco duo Matmos, so Medúlla has traditional choral arrangements and box-fresh programming, the latter courtesy of Valgeir Sigurdsson of the Icelandic group Múm, and the established Björk collaborator Mark Bell.
On one of the album's strongest tracks, "Vokuro", Björk and a 20-piece choir reinvent a timeless-sounding composition that the septuagenarian Icelandic composer Jórunn Vidar wrote at the piano. There's a fascinating story behind it. Björk explains: "Jórunn Vidar is a really grand old lady. When she studied composition in Berlin before the Second World War, she knew Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl, but I won't go into that now. When I called her to ask about using her music, she said, 'Oh, it must be lovely having a little girl. She must be such an inspiration to you.'
"I was a bit confused at first, because I hadn't realised that the song is actually a lullaby that was written for a little girl with blue eyes. It's so weird, because I've been working with that piece of music for four years now, and four years ago I had no clue that I was going to have a little blue-eyed girl of my own. Things like that kept happening on this album, everything falling into place. I'm learning to trust my instincts with that stuff." More
London Daily Telegraph
Excerpt from another interview about the recording.
"Everybody was going, 'Oh she's making a vocal album, it'll be a horrible Yoko Ono experience.'" She oohs and mmms fiercely, in imitation of Mrs Lennon's challenging output. "But I wanted to show that a vocal album doesn't have to be for the chosen few. It was just about working with the instrument I know best, my voice."
in January 2004 when she flew alone to La Gomera, one of the least visited Canary Islands, to meet up with a Canadian Inuit throat singer who had appeared with her briefly during the Vespertine tour. Tanya Taqwa, in Björk's opinion, is "like the Edith Piaf of throat singing. She makes those abstract noises passionate." They worked on a song, The Pleasure Is all Mine, in which Björk celebrated her newfound independence. After that, she found that the rest of the album came quite easily, thanks to the help she received from two choirs, the English pop maverick Robert Wyatt, and a human beatbox, Rasel, whom she first heard performing a cappella versions of Kraftwerk songs and who can apparently imitate every sound in the known universe. "Ask him to do a soap bubble and he can do it."
The result of all this extraordinary vocal manipulation is another outstandingly original album from a woman who seems incapable of playing by any rules other than her own. For those who love music for its compelling strangeness, Björk is still the boss. And for those who love music to comment meaningfully on the world around us, well, she's trying. "This album was supposed to be a response to 9/11 and all this rubbish and me thinking about a time before religion and patriotism. I wanted to show those gentlemen that there are still insects crawling, people jumping in swimming pools, building houses, having children, making songs and having abstract thought processes or whatever. That's at least 98 per cent of what humans are doing out there." Björk obviously includes herself in this informal census of everyday normality; it seems churlish to disagree. More
Posted by acapnews at August 13, 2004 10:23 PM
