Fossora

Background[edit]

Fossora was partially inspired by the 2018 death of Björk's mother, Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir; the songs "Sorrowful Soil" and "Ancestress" are about her, as well as how Björk dealt with her grief. In the album's liner notes, the former is subtitled "a eulogy for Hildur Rúna", and the latter is subtitled "an epitaph for Hildur Rúna". The album was conceptualized during the COVID-19 lockdowns after Björk travelled to Iceland to record. Keeping with the album's themes, its title is the ungrammatical feminine version of the Latin word for "digger". The album features contributions from American singer Serpentwithfeet, Björk's two children Sindri and Ísadóra, Indonesian dance duo Gabber Modus Operandi, and bass clarinet sextet Murmuri.^{[9][10][11][12]} The album was also set to feature contributions from the Venezuelan producer Arca like Björk's previous two albums Vulnicura (2015) and Utopia (2017), but due to the pandemic, Björk was unable to visit her in Barcelona or to welcome her at home.^[13]


"Allow" is an outtake from the sessions for Utopia, that was rearranged for Fossora.^[14] Per an interview with Pitchfork's Jazz Monroe, Björk says the album began as "very conceptual, like: 'This is the clarinet album!' Then halfway through, I was like, 'Fuck that.'" She described it as an "'Iceland album': often uninhibited and volatile, but also steeped in the country's choral and folk traditions, with strings Björk programmed at her local coffee shop." Her interest in mushrooms "unified the record's themes of survival, death, and ecological meditation." She frames the album in contrast to her previous Utopia, with that album being "a skybound haven after her traumatic divorce" from longtime partner Matthew Barney and Fossora being her return to Earth. She describes the fungus metaphor as "something that lives underground, but not tree roots. A tree root album would be quite severe and stoic, but mushrooms are psychedelic and they pop up everywhere."^[15]