Re-issue: Björk - Stonemilker

Song Exploder

Hrishikesh Hirway

Music

4.8 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

(This is a re-issue of Björk’s episode from December 2015.)

In January 2015, Björk released Vulnicura. She described it as "a complete heartbreak album." And in November, she released Vulnicura Strings, a companion album that stripped away the electronics. In this episode, Bjork breaks down the making of both the original version of the song "Stonemilker," which you’re hearing now, as well as the strings version. She traces her writing and recording process for the track, her collaboration with the electronic producer Arca, and why she wanted to make a second version.

For more, visit songexploder.net/björk.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece,
0:05.0	tell the story of how they were made.
0:06.6	I'm Rishikesh Herway.
0:11.2	This week I wanted to go back and revisit the Bjork episode that I made back in 2015,
0:16.2	in part because it's one of my favorite episodes.
0:18.6	And in part because this fall in 2022, Bjork has a new album coming out and she also has
0:23.7	a new podcast where she talks about the making of each one of her albums in conversation
0:28.6	with her collaborators.
0:30.0	The show is called Sonic Symbolism.
0:32.0	Here's a trailer.
0:34.0	Most of us go through faces in our lives that take roughly three years and it is not
0:43.6	a coincidence that this is often how long it takes to make an album, a book, or a film.
0:52.3	When the conversations on this podcast, me and my friends try to capture which moods,
0:59.3	timbres and tempos, blur vibrating during each of my ten albums.
1:07.0	When I get asked about the differences of the music on my records, I find it quickest
1:13.3	to use visual shortcuts.
1:16.8	That's kind of why my album covers are almost like homemade tarot cards.
1:21.8	The image on the front might seem just like a visual moment, but for me it is simply
1:28.1	describing the sound of it.
1:31.3	I try to express this with a color palette, the textures of the textiles, with what I'm
1:38.7	holding and the angle of the posture I'm in shows its relationship to the world.
1:45.4	So the emotion of the mouth tries to share the overall mood of the album.
	...

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