Bjork, Iceland’s national treasure and one of the greatest living musicians has released the first single of her forthcoming ninth studio album today, titled ‘The Gate.’ The track has been described as a love song and is a hauntingly beautiful blend of violins, vocals and fragility hovering on an electronic backdrop.
In celebration of Bjork’s most recent genius, we’ve decided to dedicate our Felix Friday Playlist #9 to all things Bjork, her best work, collaborations and the artists she’s celebrated and championed publicly. We start, of course, with ‘The Gate’ and follow with ‘Army of Me,’ the 1995 single from her second solo studio album ‘Post’ and a noticeably heavier era.
A seven track project which was released in 2010 for charity, the brains and frontman of the band, Dave Longstreth, admitted the songs had been written in less than a month, rehearsed for a week and recorded live and all in the same room.
Urchin, the dreamy soundscape and fourth track in our playlist comes from Venezuelan prodigal producer and Bjork’s protégé and collaborator Arca.
The young electronic producer co-produced Bjork’s eighth studio album Vulnicura and it has been announced he also co-produced the upcoming as-of-yet, untitled ninth studio album. The pair have described Vulnicura as a ‘sonic hell’ and have announced that the impending project will be a parallel, sonic paradise.
Kanye West’s varied and multimodal artistic genius has long-time been compared to that of Bjork’s and although the pair have yet to collaborate, they are vocal about their mutual admiration of each other’s work. Arca also made a collaborative appearance on Kanye’s acclaimed Yeezus album and so we’ve added his seminal track, ‘Blood on the Leaves.’
Another undeniably strong female force in music is found in the queen of pop, Madonna and her largely forgotten 1994 track ‘Bedtime Story’ is the only song of hers to be written by Bjork and it has her undoubtedly identifiable sonic and lyrical stamp all over it.
Next up, we have Jeremih’s sultry RnB track ‘oui’ as Bjork was quoted in a 2016 interview with The Guardian- ‘Out of all these R&B guys he’s my favourite, when I want a really pure, happy R&B song about celebrating life, I put Jeremih on.” Bjork has also admitted to being a RuPaul fan, so we’ve added pop classic ‘Sissy That Walk’ to the list.
To end our playlist, we bring it back to ethereal dreamscape Bjork territory and have included a collaborative folk track by a fellow Icelandic singer-songwriter Jofriður Akadottir and Icelandic band Low Roar titled ‘Bones.’ Lastly, Bjork has recently championed Syrian avant-garde electro artist KÁRYYN, who grew up in Indiana and spent summers in Aleppo. Listen to her aptly titled track ‘Aleppo’ and keep an ear out for this rising star.
Bjork’s ninth studio album will be released in November although the date and title have yet to be announced. If you’re in London this weekend, you can see the video for ‘The Gate’ for free, in collaboration with Fashion Week, at The Store Studios, between 10am-6pm. Listen to our Felix Fridays Playlist #9 here.
The post Music: Felix Fridays #9 is All About Bjork appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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