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There is only one artist that can combine bass clarinet ensembles, gabber techno, and mushrooms into a pop record. Björk has consistently been one of the most exciting musical pioneers since her solo Debut almost thirty years ago. With every album comes a total reinvention: a new toybox of instruments to play with, a newly sprawling, Saga-like story to tell, and new artwork depicting the feminine archetypes of her sonic symbolism. Just when you think Björk has done it all, she once again raises the bar even higher. Her tenth album Fossora is no exception: at a milestone in her career, her prowess as a musician is stronger than ever before.

The name Fossora is derived from the feminine version of the Latin word for digger (“fossor”), and draws from Björk’s experience of being grounded during lockdown in her native Iceland. Put plainly yet elegantly on the title track, she “stayed in one place long enough to shoot down deep hyphae roots,” forming a mycorrhizal musical network after coming back down to Earth from the aerial paradise of 2017’s Utopia. These fungal roots have much to do with the album’s themes, not only in its effortlessly inventive “biological techno” but also in its grappling with family, country, love, and grief. Dance through Fossora’s labyrinthine turns and you will find a clear path guiding the way through, paved by Björk’s inimitable songwriting.

Our entry point into this eclectic underworld is ‘Atopos’, where Björk folds in her many influences and styles to totally eviscerate ideas of human connection and communication while speaking of muddy interpersonal tension. A delightful imbroglio of clarinets meets vigorous gabber eruptions, the piledriving rhythm takes over the body completely, and vocals are flung out to the farthest reaches via subterranean veins. The following ‘Ovule’ is even more multifarious, somehow distilling her entire discography into one single pop song. It’s an exegesis on love, written with esoteric philosophies and performed with anthemic brass arrangements and extraterrestrial reggaetón beats.

In tribute to her late mother Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir, ‘Sorrowful Soil’ is the first in a duo of cathartic farewells, where Björk weaves “emotional textiles” with sprawling autotuned vocals. Featuring her son Sindri Eldon, ‘Ancestress’ is orchestral splendour, with delicate harmonies between mother and son rotating around the clockwork of gongs, bells, and chimes. Strings soundtrack the Atlantic-Arctic tides of Iceland’s harbours, falling in hushed reverence and rising in absolute glory.

Tracks like ‘Fungal City’ show off the range of clarinets, whistling like the glimmers of bioluminescent fungal architecture and humming deeply with the Earth’s geological heartbeat. Plucked strings twinkle like jewels studded in the cave ceiling, contrasting with the piercing stalactites of razor sharp beats. “I’m enraptured,” Björk sings, and we are too. Quivering strings carve doubt into their wooden bodies on the arousingly minimal ‘Freefall’, before soaring into a faux-climax and reigniting with mystical, luminous plucks, leading into the jubilantly swooping reeds of ‘Fossora’ soon set ablaze by assertive, visceral beats.

We leave with ‘Her Mother’s House’, where woodwinds blow off steam, releasing spores into the air as Björk sings one last lullaby before her daughter treks off into the world. Ísadóra’s arresting melismas meet in a sweet communion of harmonies as the two sing, “The more I love you, the stronger you become, and the less you need me.” It’s a true tearjerker that closes an album full of wildly fun surprises, highly imaginative sound design, and emotional storytelling. The end result is a mixture of the fantastical and the personal, a bold artistic excursion from a distinctly individual, restless creative force.