Me in Traffic, Listening to Bjork's New "Music"

While it isn't exactly a "sport," per se (and it barely even qualifies as an activity), listening to Bjork's new "music" is definitely an adventure, and it is certainly very, very difficult. So I have decided to briefly discuss it here.

However, it is unclear if the reason I now find it so horrible is because I'm sober, or if she possibly became more drunk. Either way, while her old stuff is golden, this new stuff gets a Sober Fun Rating of Zero (0).

I have long since been a huge Bjork fan. Her early (and middle) stuff was, in my opinion, some of the best and most revolutionary music ever made. Her voice is amazing and her choices unexpected. She changed music forever... but not always in a good way. Because let’s be honest, a lot of her later albums are just terrible, to the point of unlistenable. At one point with her albums, you’d be lucky to find just one or two songs that didn’t make you want to claw your ears off. What exactly was going on here?

I like to think there was something going on behind the scenes that we didn’t know about. Like on Top Chef where they tell the contestants, "but here’s the catch: for this challenge you can’t use your knives!" Or, you have to cook blind folded, or only with your teeth, or whatever.

So I think Bjork, unbeknownst to us, was part of some kind of challenge, where under no circumstances was she allowed to use anything that could remotely be considered a melody. The "No-Melody Challenge." And obviously anything resembling a chorus was out, that’s a given. In fact, immediate disqualification if anyone, anywhere could even begin to hum any portion of what she was doing in her “song.”

And maybe bonus points if the "song" was so musically incomprehensible that she herself couldn’t ever replicate the same non-melody twice.

And while this is all, intellectually, a fascinating little exercise, why it was recorded and unleashed upon the public is anyone’s guess. Maybe so that we at home could then conduct our own little challenge? See how long you can endure listening to the album without turning it off in a murderous rage?

I also feel bad for anyone who was hired to work on some of her later albums because, how would you even know what to do? Like, as a sound editor or sound mixer or whatever. I mean, how to you apply noise reduction to a track that’s pure noise anyways?

SOUND MIXER: Hey Bjork.

BJORK: Hey guys, so are you about done? Close to finishing up?

SOUND MIXER: Um...yes? I mean, Yes. Or... Possibly maybe? Actually, we’re not real sure what you want us to do, this is all just so terrible, did you want us to... add more random beeps and clanging like we did on the last track, or... ?? You’re not really in any recognizable key, per se, so it’s hard to clean that up.... but I guess we could make it...louder? Louder, yeah? We can do louder...?

By the way, we've been working on a new technique, and trying to figure out a way we can mix and edit all your "music" without having to actually listen to it. It's still in the beta phase, but this is very important to us, moving forward...

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This is an excerpt from a larger list, where I give various activities a Sober Fun rating of 1-10. Entries from this list are scattered throughout my website, or you can find that complete list HERE.

You can read more of my thoughts about Iceland HERE.