mimesis
Her reconnection to world events in part began on Boxing Day 2005. Following the tsunami in Indonesia, Björk recorded an album of fans’ remixes of her single Army of Me, donating the proceeds to Unicef. A year later, she was invited to visit the region and found “they were still just digging in the earth and finding bones and dresses of relatives”, an image that you suspect might have occasioned her desire for the dirty sound of the clavichord. She flew from Indonesia straight to New York, to a studio session with the producer Timbaland, and immediately wrote the song Earth Intruders. “It just came like a tsunami out of my mouth,” she says, sounding still faintly surprised, “and lyrically it’s probably the most chaotic song that I’ve ever written, it sort of doesn’t make sense.” It is a marching song, “Bundle of bombardiers,” it insists, “We are the canoneers/ Apache voodoo.” She shakes her head a little, rubs her nose. “I tried to edit it afterwards to fix it and make logic out of it,” she says, “but it’s just like chaos.”
Bjork… Hanging out with tsunami survivors? And working with Timbaland??
Maybe she’s just trying to be more like M.I.A.
But, somehow, I don’t think Bjork is going to sound quite as militant – certainly not going to put a scare into the state department at visa renewal time. (Despite her newly found “politics.”) Not when she blurts out lines like, “It just came like a tsunami out of my mouth.” And with those lyrics…
I agree with that “ugh.”
Commie Curmudgeon
April 30, 2007 at 8:30 am