It was oh so quiet in Björk land until the Icelandic singer revealed that her new album Vulnicura -- her first since 2011's multimedia project Biophilia -- would arrive in March.
An online leak of the album soon followed the announcement, and on Tuesday, Björk responded by releasing the nine-track Vulnicura and cover art early on iTunes.
Vulnicura was one of the most-anticipated albums of 2015. The avant-garde artist described its creation process on Facebook:
i guess i found in my lap one year into writing it a complete heartbreak album . kinda surprised how thoroughly i had documented this in pretty much accurate emotional chronology .... like 3 songs before a break up and three after . so the anthropologist in me sneaked in and i decided to share them as such . first i was worried it would be too self indulgent but then i felt it might make it even more universal . and hopefully the songs could be a help , a crutch to others and prove how biological this process is : the wound and the healing of the wound . psychologically and physically . it has a stubborn clock attached to it .
there is a way out
and then a magic thing happened to me : as i lost one thing something else entered . alejandro contacted me late summer 2013 and was interested in working with me . it was perfect timing . to make beats to the songs would have taken me 3 years ( like on vespertine ) but this enchanted arca would visit me repeatedly and only few months later we had a whole album !!! it is one of the most enjoyable collaboration i have had !
i then went ahead and wrote string and choir arrangements and recorded them in iceland
and whom else to lure into singing with me my worship-of-love-song "atom dance " than my goddess of love : antony ?
towards the end of the album i started looking around for a mixing engineer and was introduced by a mutual friend of ours , robin carolan to the haxan cloak . he mixed the album and also made a beat for one half of "family" . together with chris elms the engineer we kinda formed a band during the mixing process and this is the album we made !!!
Björk will take Vulnicura on a brief New York City tour in March and April, before performing at the Governors Ball Music Festival, which takes place from June 5 to 7.