Earth Intruders

I picked up the new Bjork "Volta" album yesterday, and I must say I'm impressed. This is her most fun work in years! I particularly like "Earth Intruders", the first single off the album and one of her collaborations with Timbaland. It is so catchy, and the implications of what the song means are very big.

In an interview on mtv.com Björk talked about the background of the song.

"The song "Earth Intruders," in particular, was sculpted soon after Björk awoke from a dream she had during a cross-Atlantic flight to New York. In the dream, the singer said a "tsunami of millions and millions of poverty-stricken people" swelled high above the airplane she was a passenger on. Eventually, the wave overtook the plane, hit land and razed the White House into oblivion. "It's a quite chaotic song," she said of Volta's first single. "Lyrically, it's a collection of all of these images" burned into her memory, from her trip to Indonesia as well as her vivid, in-flight reverie."

I think her visit to Indonesia last year post-tsunami really affected her work on this album.

From her Pitchfork interview:

Marching--both the rhythm of feet and the concept of marching itself--seems to play a big part in this record. What's the significance of marching?

I just wanted to get rhythmic again. Medulla was my way of pulling out of that, refusing to be categorized as 'Oh what rhythm is she going to do next?' Just feeling the pressure of all these young drum programmers or producers or whatever you call them contacting me, like, who was going to be the flavor of the month. It had become this kind of fashion statement, it just wasn't right.

I mean, I do love one-upmanship sometimes, like when you see kids breakdancing and who can do the best tricks. It's common, it's in our nature as animals, like the birds of paradise who've got the best feathers and that sort of stuff. But it's fun when it's impulsive and it's about fun. When it becomes clever, when it becomes more of a left-brain, who can mathematically out-do the other, it's not so fun anymore. And maybe I just sort of pulled out and did a whole vocal album.

But I definitely missed my rhythms. I mean, I love rhythms. I started an all-girl punk band when I was 14 and I was the drummer, not the singer. I'm very, very, very picky when it comes to rhythms. So it was fun to approach it from another angle on this one.

And I'd be lying if I didn't say it was some sort of reaction to the state of the world today. I mean, I went in January over a year ago to Indonesia, to the area where the tsunami hit the worst. Just seeing a village of 300,000 people and 180,000 died, and people were still there digging people out and the smell of corpses and bone. The tsunami kind of scraped houses away, you could still see the floor, and the people I was with found their mom's favorite dress kind of in the mud and it was just like, outrageous.

I mean, the human race, we are a tribe, let's face it, and let's stop all this religious bullshit. I think everybody, or at least a lot of my friends, are just so exhausted with this whole self-importance of religious people. Just drop it. We're all fucking animals, so let's just make some universal tribal beat. We're pagan. Let's just march.

Gob, I love this woman. Very nice to have her back again. I can't wait to see how the album does and what the remixes sound like!

Coming up...more new music on the way!

• Groove Armada - Soundboy Rock
  
• Superchumbo - Let's Go Chumbo
  
• Steve Porter - Porterhouse V2
  
• Terry Lee Brown Jr - Karambolage

Dubfire from Deep Dish is playing the Whiskey tonight. Yeesh - another Wednesday show. I think the Satoshi Tomiie show is on a Wednesday night as well. Anyone interested in checking out the Starkillers show at Tantra on May Long Weekend Sunday night?