“Bird species never seen or heard before / the first flute carved from the first fauna,” she sings in her reverb-drenched upper register, to sublime effect. It is an atmosphere that recalls the bliss of Vespertine, but replaces harp and celeste with birdsong and woodwinds. It is a hothouse, a humid jungle of bird calls and an interplaying twelve-piece flute ensemble weaving in and out of soft beats.
#Utopia album vinyl side 4 full
“Utopia,” meanwhile, the first title track of Björk’s career, is conceivably this album’s mission statement, and musically finds her paradise in full bloom. It’s a strong transition from the darkness of Vulnicura to the comparative light of Utopia, but Björk’s plaintive cries of “care for you, care for you” do err on the more melancholy side. The song’s glimmering electronic whoosh is wonderfully illustrated in its striking accompanying visuals, highlighting the metaphoric prism of love that is thrown back and forth. Lyrically, there is a flourishing of the themes of love’s curative powers, the “healed chest wound” of Vulnicura’s potent imagery transforming into a gate from which love is shared. Long silences, ambient synths, and field recordings of cave sounds that recall “Cover Me” from 1995’s Post converge on a chilly, desolate Arca soundscape upon which Björk pins her eerie vocal melody. Lead single “The Gate” is not necessarily anomalous, but feels more barren and haunting than some of the other material. The theme of musical partnership as seen in the “weaving a mixtape” of “Arisen My Senses” continues with the imagery of “two music nerds obsessing… sending each other MP3s / falling in love to a song.”
The beautiful “Blissing Me” is similarly classic Björk, a celestial marriage of gentle flute calls, soft chamber harp arpeggios, and percolating micro beats that recall both 2001’s Vespertine and the more accessible material from 2005’s Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack (specifically the glassy “Ambergris March.”) It’s as romantic and sensual as Björk’s best material, its repetitive melodic line maintaining the sensation of being inside an impenetrable cocoon of love. As she told FACT Magazine : “After we’d taken the saddest coordinates of each other and combined them into Vulnicura, we were doing the opposite now. Sampling one of Arca’s exuberant early songs, “Little Now A Lot,” the song suitably situates the warm, tropical climate of the album’s sound, but also the unique fusion of their respective visions. Heavy, humid beats collide with delicate harps in a steady rhythm as Björk, in luxurious vocal layers, sings of how “just that kiss / was all there is” in reawakening her senses. Opener “Arisen My Senses” even sounds like a fog clearing, a renewed sense of purpose rising from the tropical steams, senses reawakening after the emotional desolation of Vulnicura. Where Vulnicura was claustrophobic and noir, Utopia is an explosion of space and colour – not quite as light and airy as the pre-release press would attest, but proudly displaying its joyful, dense layers of sound. It is about finding the light, and the joy, after plumbing the depths of despair. Where Vulnicura was the bleak evocation of a long-term relationship’s demise, all elegiac strings, forensically detailed lyrical excavations of pain and turmoil, and austere beats, Utopia is its flipside – a beautiful, lush, opulent fusion of flutes, birdsong, and tectonic electronics. The result is its follow-up – the heavenly, idiosyncratic soundscape of Utopia. As the years have passed, she has increasingly orbited a more avant-garde musical universe of long-form structures and complex experimentation, and her work with Venezuelan artist and producer Alejandro Ghersi (aka Arca) on 2015’s Vulnicura led, eventually, to another first for her – an entire album built around their collaboration, from the first note to the last. A single record could include explosive beats alongside gentle harps, guttural moans and shrieks buried among breathy coos demonic choirs, atonal strings, and glorious orchestrations. Björk’s albums have always exhibited a curious mix of sounds and styles.
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