You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
This week, I wanted to go back and revisit the Björk episode that I made back in 2015,
in part because it's one of my favorite episodes, and in part because this fall,
in 2022, Björk has a new album coming out,
and she also has a new podcast where she talks about the making of each one of her albums in conversation with her collaborators.
The show is called Sonic Symbolism.
Here's the trailer.
that take roughly three years.
And it is not a coincidence that this is often how long it takes to make an album, a book or a film.
In the conversations on this podcast, me and my friends tried to capture which moods,
timbres and tempos were vibrating during each of my ten albums.
When I get asked about the differences of the music on my records,
I find it quickest to use visual shortcuts.
That's kinda why my album covers are almost like homemade tarot cards.
The image on the front might seem just like a visual moment,
but for me it is simply describing the sound of it.
I try to express this with a color palette.
The textures of the textiles with what I'm holding and the angle of the posture I'm in shows its relationship to the world.