Björk shares Fossora‘s title track
Her 10th solo studio album as an adult arrives Friday via One Little Independent Records.
We’re three days away from the highly anticipated arrival of Fossora, Björk’s 10th solo studio LP — or, if you include the self-titled project she put out at age 12 and 1990’s Gling-Gló (a jazz record she cut with tríó Guðmundar Ingólfssonar three years before releasing her official Debut), her 12th. Since the forthcoming August announcement, she’s unloaded one of its songs every week of September, each of them popping up in staggered sync with a new episode of her career-spanning podcast, Björk: Sonic Symbolism. And today, in the 11th hour of the album’s release cycle, she’s offered up its fourth and final pre-drop single, which also happens to be its title track.
“Fossora” features DJ Kasimyn of the Indonesian dance duo Gabber Modus Operandi and follows “Atopos” (also featuring Kasimyn), “Ovule,” and “Ancestress” (feat. Björk’s adult son Sindri Eldon Þórsson), both chronologically and on Fossora‘s tracklist; it’s listed the penultimate cut on the project, whereas the previous three singles all appear on the LP’s first half.
The forthcoming album’s title translates literally from Icelandic as “digger,” and Björk has said that the project is mushroom themed. Each track has followed through on this idea — and the record’s visual elements certainly have — but the new song is her most literal sonic iteration of the concept thus far.
“Her nerves spread like wings / At mycelium speed / Into the atmosphere / There’s spores everywhere,” she sings in the first verse over jerky woodwind accompaniment.
“For millions of years / We’ve been ejecting our spores / Seedlings and sprouts / Are shot into the ground,” she continues on the second, while Kasimyn’s synthetic beat begins to build beneath the instrumental.
“Her fossorial claw / Digs downwards / Dissolves old pain, dug down to rot / Decomposes debris / Degrades / Sorrows, hair and hooves,” she goes on in the third, as the track briefly returns to its delightfully awkward, origins.
“At last / We stayed / In one place long enough / To shoot down deep hyphae roots / That penetrate concrete and plastic / Even though the ground is burnt / Underneath monumental growth,” she finishes on the fourth, Kasimyn’s pummeling sub bass finally overtaking the frantic reeds, and his chanted shouts of the song and album’s title subsuming her increasingly distorted vocals.
Listen above.
