Vulnicura Strings (The Acoustic Version: Strings, Voice and Viola Organista Only)

Album review

One might think of her as forever anchored in the 90s and the dawn of the 2000s, but really Björk is an artist in constant evolution, always open to a reconsideration of the personal or artistic question. On the year of her fiftieth birthday, the Icelander revealed that she still had much more to give, releasing the magisterial Vulnicura, a disturbing melee between clinical advanced technology and visceral, organic, and carnal sensations. In a way, the output of the Björk of 2015 has much more in common with Homogenic and Vespertine than the cerebral Biophilia, the album that she released in 2011. This sensation is amplified by the fact that the singer has rarely put in as much of a bare vocal performance. Her breakup with the photographer and visual artist Matthew Barney lies at the heart of this dense disk; both in lyrics and in music it offers great structural feats. These feats gain in beauty when one understands that the strings were based on industrial martial rhythms. The voice of the singer – as elastic and impressive as ever – intrudes upon this singular, creative ocean. To help her in her task, Björk was aided by two young upstarts in the electro sphere, the young Brit Bobby Krlic (a.k.a The Haxan Cloak) and the Venezuelan Alejandro Ghersi, better known as Arca. Furthermore, on the track ‘Atom Dance’, she convenes with another stray voice, that of Antony Hegarty from Antony and the Johnsons. So, importantly, this ninth studio album brought its author back into the forefront of the contemporary music scene… But, here, Björk shows us that strings can be sufficient in themselves, presenting an entirely acoustic version of Vulnicura, where electronic rhythms give way to the timelessness of a purely symphonic version. In this new version, mixed by Chris Elms, only the original strings and voice have been preserved. These elements are placed alongside the violin solos of Una Sveinbjarnardóttir and Sławomir Zubrzycki, performing at the head of the Viola Organista (recorded in Poland). An instrument, invented by Leonardo da Vinci, built for the first time after his death, and of which there is no other copy in the world, is used on the record; namely a keyboard whose chords are played by a perpetually rotating belt, not played or struck like a conventional harpsichord or piano… Once again, then, Björk surprises and bewitches us. © MD/Qobuz