2023-09-05 00:58:47
The Icelandic cuppletista had spent sixteen years without going through the capital out of nowhere, I mean DANA, it doesn’t matter, fortunately, a Björk who arrived at Madrid’s WiZink with the refined and ecological assembly of his ‘Cornucopia’ tour, where he has incorporated the songs from ‘Fossora’, his 2022 album, and which symbiose with those of his previous ‘Utopia’, with the Venezuelan producer Arca, a durete repertoire heard on Spotify at once because of its linearity and not very melodic (on Twitter a man explained that he had left the show because he was unbearable, he attached a photo of a Mahou).
And yet, ‘the sonic’ must inevitably be combined here with the impressive 3D digital images and stage direction by Lucrecia Martel, the set design by Chiara Stephenson, the musical and choreographic accompaniment of a septet of flutes, clarinetists, pads, a synthetic xylophone, a harpist and even a guy playing water, pouring it into loud jugs, simulating a kind of medieval forest, with hints of a rave, a fantasy elven party at Baldur’s Gate in Almeida under the baton of a quirky little Martian and elegant as a red bird and then a white one that trilled with its proverbial force (tell that to the reporter that he shook at an airport, Ilia Topuria attentive).
Thus, the concert began with the sound of some birds and noises against a curtain of digital strips with metamorphosing images while Björk began her operatic litanies as a dark and baroque Galadriel, experimental music for the masses, and a WiZink full of all the variants of the homeland modernity of a certain age. The plan, to enjoy something unique of its kind made up of synesthetic fungi, bacterial microorganisms and an endless number of organic germs in a Garden of Earthly Delights deconstructed in cacophonies: ecologists in mutant action.
Of the songs, ‘Ovule’ stood out, close to spoken work, ‘Isobel’, one of the few old ones, vocal constructions that are hard to enjoy like ‘Blissing Me’, superimposed interludes like ‘Mycelia’ (with the slightest attempt to become techno, which the staff really would have liked it because of how it was applauded), the inhospitable beauty of ‘Loss’ or the various ‘Fossora’-type role-playing video game soundtracks on which Björk took us down disconcerting paths in a show that sounded more accessible than on record (the display is the fairies), beautiful and adjusted in its duration of an hour and a half.
After, Greta Thunberg emerged in the fringed pants to lavish us with an anti-establishment message expounded dramatically (“You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future before their very eyes. If solutions within this system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself. We will not beg world leaders to worry, they have ignored us in the past and will ignore us again. They are out of excuses and we are out of time. But I am here to tell you that change is coming whether you like it or not. True power belongs to the people.” The concert, by the way, cost from 60 euros to 120 a ticket.
During the young Greta video, Björk ducked out to change her dress and closed with the beautiful ‘Future Forever’ and the exciting ‘Notget’, with a corollary final mantra: «Love will keep us all safe from death. Love will keep us all…”. And, if it’s not love, I understand, war. Greta’s.
#Elven #Party #Björks #Forest #Greta #Thunberg