Björk announces new album ‘Fossora,’ due this fall

Björk has announced her next album. Titled Fossora, the singer revealed in a profile for The Guardian that the new project is due this fall. Fossora will follow 2017’s Utopia. 

The music on the album will revolve around sounds from a sextet of bass clarinets, played in a way Björk describes as “like Public Enemy, like duh-duh-duh-duh, like boxing,” and is inspired by a loose theme of underground and fungal lifeforms. Björk has also enlisted the help of Indonesian electronic duo Gabber Modus Operandi, formulating a style she’s termed as “biological techno.” Further inspirations on Fossora include Björk’s late mother, for whom two songs on the album are written for, and Björk’s children who also provide backing vocals on the album. Experimental musician Serpentwithfeet is also featured on the album.

Speaking on the new album, Björk revealed that much of it was conceived during lockdown, noting that the gabber influence comes from parties she would host at her home in Iceland during this time. “When we got drunk or partied it was like we went a little bit mental, then we just fell asleep before midnight. Slow energy, but then it goes double,” she said, comparing the experience to gabber itself. She distinguishes the album from Utopia, in her words “a pacifist, idealistic album with flutes and synths and birds,” noting that Fossora is about exploring the fantasy world proposed by Utopia in a more visceral way. 

No official release date for Fossora has been announced. Read the full feature in The Guardian here.