BJORK Vinilo y CD

Review: The tenth studio album by Bjork, released in early 2023, hears the Icelandic singer include increasingly conceptual approaches to making music, a trend which has continued at least since the mid-point of her career at large. Fossora is a concept album about the life cycle of fungi, exploring themes of decay, regeneration, symbiosis and transformation. With cameos from El Guincho and Arca, as well as vocal contributions from Sindri Eldon, isadora Bjarkardottir Barney and the Hamrahlid Choir, it's an ethereal, organic-surreal foray into darkroot gardens and moonlit quasi-fungal butterflies, and the perfect follow-up to the album released five years prior, Utopia.

Review: Depending on which reviews you read, Utopia is either Bjork's most impressive album for a long time, or an interesting but flawed one. Co-produced by Mute and XL artist Arca with occasional studio contributions from Rabit, the set was designed to be positive and dream-like in tone, with Bjork delivering some of her most romantic lyrics to date. Musically, it's every bit as bonkers and brilliant as you'd expect, with pastoral and classical instrumentation nestling side by side with 8-bit electronics, bowel-bothering sub-bass, folksy textures and wildlife field recordings. It should perhaps be seen as a partner piece to the notably dystopian Vulcinara (2015), offering a more blissful counterpoint to that album's bleak and intense mood.

Review: Following from the success of this year's Vulnicura LP, Iceland's Bjork has decided to release an acoustic companion made up of string-only reinterpretations; a more abstract and pensive piece, if you will. One Little Indian is the label, of course, but this time there are strictly no beats, and the only concrete sounds within it are the subtle and placid wails of Bjork's own voice. While it isn't truly a pop album, there is enough playfulness and charm to render it playable not only as a solitary piece of music, but also alongside other pieces...in an explorative DJ set, perhaps.

Review: And so Bjork's majestic remix collection continues to trickle onto our shelves and into your eardrums. The legendary leftfield pop singer / producer gives up her "Lionsong" tune for remix action from none other than Juliana Huxtable; the newcomer has only got a couple of cameo appearances to their name, but she's coming through string with this one. In essence, it's a techno tune - driven by fire kick drums and minimal sonics - but her soulful twists of vocals render it to be much more than that in the end. It's a soothing, delicate techno massage with a powerful energy.

Review: When is a remix album not a remix album? When it's creatively driven by Bjork. The wonderfully titled Bastards might be a collection of reversions from her 2011 album Biophilia but it's clear all artists have been specially considered for their job and worked hard to subvert their usual motifs; stretching from the warped techno twists of 16-Bit's take on "Hollow" to the ghostly acapella of These New Puritans remix of "Mutual Core", this is one bastard you want in your life.

Review: Bjork and Rosalia team up for the limited marble vinyl edition 12" double-sider, 'Oral', now coming packed with a stunning remix by Olof Dreijer from The Knife. The record is described by its releasers OLI as not just a single release but a "call to arms", with 100% of the profits being funnelled directly to AEGIS, the Icelandic charity dedicated to eradicating intensive fish farming in the country. 'Oral' itself is now a staple of the latest incarnation of Bjork's ever-mutant career, consummating her and Rosalia's recent rapport; a sabre-wielding, purblind aesthetic - befitting also of another of Bjork's collaborative contemporaries, Arca - fits seamlessly with the elegiac reggaeton of the song. Dreijer's remix is rabid and wonky by comparison, its draggy, morphemic rhythms belying Bjork and Rosalia's equally wetted vocals, producing a wacky litany of faunal electronics and whizzing FX.