MUZ Muziek
Het forum voor 's werelds enige universele hobby! Snaren of toetsen, vinyl of cd, eendagsvlieg of rasartiest, op de radio of op een festival! Hier kun je al je ongebreideld enthousiasme, maar ook je weldoordachte kritische noten kwijt over muziek
Exclusive: Bjork Talks Volta for the Very First Time
On Friday, Björk opened her music box and revealed its latest treasure: Volta, the Icelandic powerhouse's forthcoming album, due out May 7 on One Little Indian/Atlantic.
The record was produced by Björk herself, and features a globe-trotting all-star cast of contributors, including Timbaland, Antony, Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale, percussionist Chris Corsano, African collective Konono N°1, kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté, Chinese pipa player Min Xiao-Fen, and a ten-piece Icelandic brass section.
Last week in New York City, Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy sat down with Björk for her first interview about the new album. (Full disclosure: Stosuy is a friend of Matthew Barney, Björk's partner.) During their lengthy chat, Björk opened up about the politics and sonics of Volta, her relationships with her collaborators, and her plans for the future.
In the first part of a series that will continue over the course of the coming weeks, Björk talks about the rhythms of Volta: how they're different from the rhythms of her previous work, and how a trip to tsunami-stricken Indonesia inspired the life-force behind the beats.
Pitchfork: On your last album, Medulla, you focused on the human voice. This album has more of a percussive feel. Were you consciously trying to focus on percussion on this album?
Björk: I guess it was really different from how I usually work. Because at least with Homogenic, Vespertine, and Medulla, if there was a starting point, it was rhythms. I don't know why, maybe because it's the thing that I don't do. With Homogenic, I would start with a programmer, just to do distorted rock beats. And we did, I think, 100 just one bar things. And by the time I had written enough songs, I would just sit down, and then I could just sort of call it, 'okay, for the chorus of this song, like beat 73, and for the verse, number two' or whatever. And for Vespertine, I had just gotten my first laptop, and it was very much about the static universe of the internet, and all the beats clicking and everything whispered. So that would be the starting point. And obviously, Medulla was a vocal album.
But with this one, it was different because I knew more emotionally what I wanted. And because I'd done two or three projects in a row that were quite serious, maybe I just needed to get that out of my system or something. So all I wanted to do for this album was just to have fun and do something that was full-bodied and really up.
I actually did the whole album, and it wasn't until the last two or three months where the only jigsaw that hadn't been solved was the rhythms. We had done a lot of experiments with rhythms but I just threw them all away because it was like every time we did something really clever with drum programming beats, it was just too pretentious for this album, it just didn't stick.
For some reason, for me it was maybe a little bit nostalgic going back to 1992, where you had really simple 808 and 909 really lo-fi drum machines, not doing anything fancy but really basic, almost like rave stuff or trance stuff, and then really, really acoustic drums. So there are a couple of tracks on this album which are actually programs, with many programming hours spent, and you listen to it, and it sounds like kettle drums or something.
Pitchfork: Marching--both the rhythm of feet and the concept of marching itself--seems to play a big part in this record. What's the significance of marching?
Björk: I just wanted to get rhythmic again. Medulla was my way of pulling out of that, refusing to be categorized as 'Oh what rhythm is she going to do next?' Just feeling the pressure of all these young drum programmers or producers or whatever you call them contacting me, like, who was going to be the flavor of the month. It had become this kind of fashion statement, it just wasn't right.
I mean, I do love one-upmanship sometimes, like when you see kids breakdancing and who can do the best tricks. It's common, it's in our nature as animals, like the birds of paradise who've got the best feathers and that sort of stuff. But it's fun when it's impulsive and it's about fun. When it becomes clever, when it becomes more of a left-brain, who can mathematically out-do the other, it's not so fun anymore. And maybe I just sort of pulled out and did a whole vocal album.
But I definitely missed my rhythms. I mean, I love rhythms. I started an all-girl punk band when I was 14 and I was the drummer, not the singer. I'm very, very, very picky when it comes to rhythms. So it was fun to approach it from another angle on this one.
And I'd be lying if I didn't say it was some sort of reaction to the state of the world today. I mean, I went in January over a year ago to Indonesia, to the area where the tsunami hit the worst. Just seeing a village of 300,000 people and 180,000 died, and people were still there digging people out and the smell of corpses and bone. The tsunami kind of scraped houses away, you could still see the floor, and the people I was with found their mom's favorite dress kind of in the mud and it was just like, outrageous.
I mean, the human race, we are a tribe, let's face it, and let's stop all this religious bullshit. I think everybody, or at least a lot of my friends, are just so exhausted with this whole self-importance of religious people. Just drop it. We're all fucking animals, so let's just make some universal tribal beat. We're pagan. Let's just march.
http://www.pitchforkmedia(...)for_the_Very_F#41528
On Friday, Björk opened her music box and revealed its latest treasure: Volta, the Icelandic powerhouse's forthcoming album, due out May 7 on One Little Indian/Atlantic.
The record was produced by Björk herself, and features a globe-trotting all-star cast of contributors, including Timbaland, Antony, Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale, percussionist Chris Corsano, African collective Konono N°1, kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté, Chinese pipa player Min Xiao-Fen, and a ten-piece Icelandic brass section.
Last week in New York City, Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy sat down with Björk for her first interview about the new album. (Full disclosure: Stosuy is a friend of Matthew Barney, Björk's partner.) During their lengthy chat, Björk opened up about the politics and sonics of Volta, her relationships with her collaborators, and her plans for the future.
In the first part of a series that will continue over the course of the coming weeks, Björk talks about the rhythms of Volta: how they're different from the rhythms of her previous work, and how a trip to tsunami-stricken Indonesia inspired the life-force behind the beats.
Pitchfork: On your last album, Medulla, you focused on the human voice. This album has more of a percussive feel. Were you consciously trying to focus on percussion on this album?
Björk: I guess it was really different from how I usually work. Because at least with Homogenic, Vespertine, and Medulla, if there was a starting point, it was rhythms. I don't know why, maybe because it's the thing that I don't do. With Homogenic, I would start with a programmer, just to do distorted rock beats. And we did, I think, 100 just one bar things. And by the time I had written enough songs, I would just sit down, and then I could just sort of call it, 'okay, for the chorus of this song, like beat 73, and for the verse, number two' or whatever. And for Vespertine, I had just gotten my first laptop, and it was very much about the static universe of the internet, and all the beats clicking and everything whispered. So that would be the starting point. And obviously, Medulla was a vocal album.
But with this one, it was different because I knew more emotionally what I wanted. And because I'd done two or three projects in a row that were quite serious, maybe I just needed to get that out of my system or something. So all I wanted to do for this album was just to have fun and do something that was full-bodied and really up.
I actually did the whole album, and it wasn't until the last two or three months where the only jigsaw that hadn't been solved was the rhythms. We had done a lot of experiments with rhythms but I just threw them all away because it was like every time we did something really clever with drum programming beats, it was just too pretentious for this album, it just didn't stick.
For some reason, for me it was maybe a little bit nostalgic going back to 1992, where you had really simple 808 and 909 really lo-fi drum machines, not doing anything fancy but really basic, almost like rave stuff or trance stuff, and then really, really acoustic drums. So there are a couple of tracks on this album which are actually programs, with many programming hours spent, and you listen to it, and it sounds like kettle drums or something.
Pitchfork: Marching--both the rhythm of feet and the concept of marching itself--seems to play a big part in this record. What's the significance of marching?
Björk: I just wanted to get rhythmic again. Medulla was my way of pulling out of that, refusing to be categorized as 'Oh what rhythm is she going to do next?' Just feeling the pressure of all these young drum programmers or producers or whatever you call them contacting me, like, who was going to be the flavor of the month. It had become this kind of fashion statement, it just wasn't right.
I mean, I do love one-upmanship sometimes, like when you see kids breakdancing and who can do the best tricks. It's common, it's in our nature as animals, like the birds of paradise who've got the best feathers and that sort of stuff. But it's fun when it's impulsive and it's about fun. When it becomes clever, when it becomes more of a left-brain, who can mathematically out-do the other, it's not so fun anymore. And maybe I just sort of pulled out and did a whole vocal album.
But I definitely missed my rhythms. I mean, I love rhythms. I started an all-girl punk band when I was 14 and I was the drummer, not the singer. I'm very, very, very picky when it comes to rhythms. So it was fun to approach it from another angle on this one.
And I'd be lying if I didn't say it was some sort of reaction to the state of the world today. I mean, I went in January over a year ago to Indonesia, to the area where the tsunami hit the worst. Just seeing a village of 300,000 people and 180,000 died, and people were still there digging people out and the smell of corpses and bone. The tsunami kind of scraped houses away, you could still see the floor, and the people I was with found their mom's favorite dress kind of in the mud and it was just like, outrageous.
I mean, the human race, we are a tribe, let's face it, and let's stop all this religious bullshit. I think everybody, or at least a lot of my friends, are just so exhausted with this whole self-importance of religious people. Just drop it. We're all fucking animals, so let's just make some universal tribal beat. We're pagan. Let's just march.
http://www.pitchforkmedia(...)for_the_Very_F#41528
Even een laffe Björk-kick: Op de weblog van Sprk staat een track-to-track beschrijving van Björks nieuwe album Volta, die binnenkort uitkomt. Het klinkt veelbelovend, vooral omdat ik het eens ben met zijn smaak wat betreft de vorige albums van haar.
) openluchtconcerten. 
Volgens mij zeker niet gratis. The Scissor Sisters komen er ook, volgens mij is het in/bij de Westergasfabriek, en daar moet je ¤36 voor neerleggen.
't Is allemaal nog een beetje vaag..
't Is allemaal nog een beetje vaag..
I will take the sun in my mouth
Ze hebben het over 15.000 mensen per optreden. Dat past ten eerste niet in de Westergasfabriek en ten tweede komen er nooit 15.000 mensen op een Björk concert af, als het niet gratis is.
Eh, tja. Het artwork van Volta is ondertussen ook bekend gemaakt.
Björk's album covers have always been visual feasts, reflecting the spirit of the music inside while helping to maintain Björk's status as a brilliant artist. A new addition to the collection is always exciting, but the unveiling of the artwork for Volta (due out May 7 in the UK and May 8 in the U.S. on One Little Indian/Atlantic) is extra special, as Pitchfork was able to discuss the image with Björk herself.
(For part one of Brandon Stosuy's interview with Björk, click here. For part two, here. And part three, here!)
As you can see, the photo's bright colors contrast sharply with the muted tones of the covers of her last two albums, Medulla and Vespertine. This mirrors the sound of Volta, which was inspired by the universal urge to dance.
"All I wanted to do for this album was just to have fun and do something that was full-bodied and really up," Björk told Stosuy in the first part of their chat. The album cover is meant to evoke pagan femininity and, to some degree, feminism, which is a running theme throughout the music of Volta. "It's not necessarily about me as a woman, but just women," Björk told Stosuy. "Kind of that long leap of 10,000 years back, when they [were] in harmony with nature, and just little things like the fact that there are 13 full moons in a year and most women have certain things happening to them 13 times a year, but Christianity wanted to have 12 months, just to try to put that off."
Conflict with conventional organized religion is another undercurrent of Volta. "It's about being exhausted with the self-importance of religion, and thinking, 'okay, wait a minute, maybe we are one tribe, and we're actually part of nature,'.
"I was reading a lot of books the last couple of years, especially about things that interest me a lot, like neuroscience, about the two hemispheres and about how we actually are animal species, and, like, female medicine from nature, and how Christianity forced us to ignore nature and the body. There's a lot of interesting books being written by my generation of scientists that they're kind of looking at things slightly differently from how I was taught about it, at least when I was 12.
"It's sort of trying to put out some good vibes for the little princesses out there. There are actually other things than losing a glass slipper. I mean, part of it was having a little daughter and realizing, what are we telling girls? All these books out there about finding your prince. All these little girls, all they want to do is be pretty and find their prince, and I'm like, what happened to feminism here?"
"I also wanted to have some sort of shaman sort of voodoo thing, to get rid of a lot of tension. But in a happy way, not as a destructive thing, more like a celebration."
The voodoo/shaman aspect is most evident in the Volta promotional shots, the album's inside artwork, and the cover of the first single, "Earth Intruders", which will be released as a digital download on April 9. A taste of that artwork is visible on Bjork's website right now.
"It was a magical atmosphere in the photo shoot. It was kind of fun, because it wasn't about me, it was about this sort of spirit of-- like a woman who is kind of...into rave, no I'm just kidding. Like, a sort of celebration of that ancient, but at the same time kind of neon."
Volta tracklist:
01 Earth Intruders
02 Wanderlust
03 Dull Flame of Desire
04 Innocence
05 I See Who You Are
06 Vertebrae by Vertebrae
07 Pneumonia
08 Hope
09 Declare Independence
10 My Juvenile
http://www.pitchforkmedia(...)ai-artwork-tracklist
Björk's album covers have always been visual feasts, reflecting the spirit of the music inside while helping to maintain Björk's status as a brilliant artist. A new addition to the collection is always exciting, but the unveiling of the artwork for Volta (due out May 7 in the UK and May 8 in the U.S. on One Little Indian/Atlantic) is extra special, as Pitchfork was able to discuss the image with Björk herself.
(For part one of Brandon Stosuy's interview with Björk, click here. For part two, here. And part three, here!)
As you can see, the photo's bright colors contrast sharply with the muted tones of the covers of her last two albums, Medulla and Vespertine. This mirrors the sound of Volta, which was inspired by the universal urge to dance.
"All I wanted to do for this album was just to have fun and do something that was full-bodied and really up," Björk told Stosuy in the first part of their chat. The album cover is meant to evoke pagan femininity and, to some degree, feminism, which is a running theme throughout the music of Volta. "It's not necessarily about me as a woman, but just women," Björk told Stosuy. "Kind of that long leap of 10,000 years back, when they [were] in harmony with nature, and just little things like the fact that there are 13 full moons in a year and most women have certain things happening to them 13 times a year, but Christianity wanted to have 12 months, just to try to put that off."
Conflict with conventional organized religion is another undercurrent of Volta. "It's about being exhausted with the self-importance of religion, and thinking, 'okay, wait a minute, maybe we are one tribe, and we're actually part of nature,'.
"I was reading a lot of books the last couple of years, especially about things that interest me a lot, like neuroscience, about the two hemispheres and about how we actually are animal species, and, like, female medicine from nature, and how Christianity forced us to ignore nature and the body. There's a lot of interesting books being written by my generation of scientists that they're kind of looking at things slightly differently from how I was taught about it, at least when I was 12.
"It's sort of trying to put out some good vibes for the little princesses out there. There are actually other things than losing a glass slipper. I mean, part of it was having a little daughter and realizing, what are we telling girls? All these books out there about finding your prince. All these little girls, all they want to do is be pretty and find their prince, and I'm like, what happened to feminism here?"
"I also wanted to have some sort of shaman sort of voodoo thing, to get rid of a lot of tension. But in a happy way, not as a destructive thing, more like a celebration."
The voodoo/shaman aspect is most evident in the Volta promotional shots, the album's inside artwork, and the cover of the first single, "Earth Intruders", which will be released as a digital download on April 9. A taste of that artwork is visible on Bjork's website right now.
"It was a magical atmosphere in the photo shoot. It was kind of fun, because it wasn't about me, it was about this sort of spirit of-- like a woman who is kind of...into rave, no I'm just kidding. Like, a sort of celebration of that ancient, but at the same time kind of neon."
Volta tracklist:
01 Earth Intruders
02 Wanderlust
03 Dull Flame of Desire
04 Innocence
05 I See Who You Are
06 Vertebrae by Vertebrae
07 Pneumonia
08 Hope
09 Declare Independence
10 My Juvenile
http://www.pitchforkmedia(...)ai-artwork-tracklist
Hmm apart ... ik had eerder ergens anders een hele andere cover gezien
Ook geen hoogstandje, maar wel anders ...
Ook geen hoogstandje, maar wel anders ...
There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
Ik vind beide covers wel grappig eigenlijk. Heel weird, maar erg leuk.
Het stukje Earth Intruders wat al gelekt is klinkt erg mysterieus en een beetje tribalachtig. Cool.
[ Bericht 14% gewijzigd door MadGuy op 03-04-2007 20:06:01 ]
Het stukje Earth Intruders wat al gelekt is klinkt erg mysterieus en een beetje tribalachtig. Cool.
[ Bericht 14% gewijzigd door MadGuy op 03-04-2007 20:06:01 ]
Nou goed, wellicht is het toch die van Weakling, al gok ik er zelf op dat die van de eerste single zal zijn.
Ik hoop eigenlijk stiekem op die van Grobbel. Op www.bjork.com presenteren ze hem volgens mij ook als de cover van Volta. De Earth Intruders single heeft een veel simpelere cover.
Heeft iedereen de 16 seconden refrein van Earth Intruders al gehoord?
Heeft iedereen de 16 seconden refrein van Earth Intruders al gehoord?
http://www.beyazcorap.com/volta/mp3/earthintruders.mp3quote:Op dinsdag 3 april 2007 20:51 schreef MadGuy het volgende:
Heeft iedereen de 16 seconden refrein van Earth Intruders al gehoord?
I will take the sun in my mouth
Ondertussen heb ik dat stukje gehoord en het was een behoorlijk WTF! momentje ...quote:Op dinsdag 3 april 2007 20:51 schreef MadGuy het volgende:
Heeft iedereen de 16 seconden refrein van Earth Intruders al gehoord?
In ieder geval weet ik nu weer precies waarom ik liever niet naar fragmentjes luister en bij voorkeur wacht totdat ik een plaat volledig gehoord heb ...
There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
Ik vind het een hele mooie cover.
En Earth Intruders is inmiddels in zijn geheel op internet te vinden. Ik vind 'm erg tof.
En Earth Intruders is inmiddels in zijn geheel op internet te vinden. Ik vind 'm erg tof.
Ik heb eindelijk Homogenic maar eens beluisterd, en ik moet zeggen: erg cool. Hunter blijft toch wel zo ontzettend gaaf.
'Paul McCartney krijgt een award van niemand minder dan Bono' - Beau van Erven Dorens.
http://www.last.fm/user/spacemangraig
http://www.last.fm/user/spacemangraig
