Ancestress is explicitly billed as an epitaph. The slight downside is that, like some Walt Disney cartoon bluebirds, these trilling flutes and whimsical clarinets break the mood of majestic ache that makes Fossora one of Björk’s hardest-hitting albums.ījörk’s mother died in 2018 after a long illness a number of these songs are tributes to Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir. Part of this album is devoted to new romantic relationships, fantasias in which love can take root again after 2015’s anguished Vulnicura, which dealt with the breakdown in Björk’s relationship with her daughter’s father. Where Björk occasionally breaks with this lower tone palette on tracks such as Allow, it’s to let an army of flutes unleash a ravey melody to lub-dub beats. Many wind instruments remain, but these tend to be bass clarinets – often six of them – alongside trombone, oboe and cor anglais, hooting and groaning. When Björk describes her mother, she is often also describing herselfījörk’s intention was to react against the airy themes of her previous album, Utopia (2017). The beats throughout come in association with Indonesian gabber merchants Gabber Modus Operandi.

The title track offers up a particularly extreme cocktail of punishing percussion and swirling vocals. And you can, just about, dance to some of these songs – although it would probably look more like headbanging. So Fossora has proper beats on it, a kind of holy grail for longtime Björk fans who remember her clubbier past.

All she wanted to play was gabber – the pounding 90s Dutch variant on techno. Conceived during lockdown, when anyone in their right mind would have hastened back to their native island home, Fossora found Björk on Icelandic turf for an extended period, hosting micro-raves in her house. The life of the soil, nesting and burial are just three themes that grow directly out of this fertile loam. Fossora, she says, is a feminisation of the Latin word for “burrower” (badgers are “fossorial” mammals). Biophilia may have been the title of her 2011 seventh album, but the Icelandic composer’s penchant for irrepressible life forms has had an ongoing life of its own in her work.

City girl life cheat youtube