The soundtrack is perfect and flawless and illuminates the meaning of Barney's installation/film.
The music and the theme of the film - boundaries are blurred between indigenous and electronica, symphonic and microbeat, forms and formlessness, necessity and waste [drawing restraint], human and animal, organic and mechanic, myth and science, traditional art and non-traditional art, art forms and formless art, restraint and unrestraint, cultural and musical and creative and ideological collaborations spanning continents and time, interconnections of nature, technology, and organic life explored via Björk's music and via Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 installation. Humans have created dangerous binaries between themselves and nature, and between nature and technology (I do this all the time, nature good and technology evil), that needs to be transcended before humans destroy everything in their path. Humans need to remember they are part of nature, not in opposition to it, and that technology is also part of nature (technology is ultimately created from natural elements.....), not in opposition to it, that humans and nature and technology need each other to survive, anthropocentrism must end and humans must work to achieve a balance with the natural and technological world around them. Humans and nature and technology are interconnected, not at odds.
Sparkling shards of scintillating harp [Gratitude] sound like the shimmering tressilating sunlit ocean with strings of aquatic fossils and pearls concentrically spiraling in delight within the ocean's ancient underwater currents.
Petrolatum is a piece of traditional Japanese folkdance music hewed out of pulsating electronic bass lines, celebrating the preparation of the whaling vessel for its voyage, its beats becoming more frenetic and construction-site-sounding as the electro-mechical structures of the vessel haul onboard the metal tank of liquid petroleum/vasoline.
The overtone throat-singing of Pearl is primitive, aquatic animals heated and hunting and mating, echoes underwater, from the world's end the wild beauty of reindeer and walruses and berry-picking and shamanism and indigenous peoples of the Russian far north rise up in our collective consciousness thanks to a single human voice putting on the voice of an animal, boundaries blurred between indigenous and electronica and human and animal, binary transcended; instead of human versus animal, human is animal, instead of indigenous versus electronica, indigenous becomes electronica, binary relationships are explored and transcended in Drawing Restraint 9, as well as Björk entire musical oeuvre.
Bath is literally an Aposiopesis (and coincidentally she's singing over a piano piece called "Aposiopesis"), beginning with a swirl of incomplete-but-curious thoughts about the unknown journey she is facing. When the piece begins, she sounds hesitant and unsure and taciturn, her thoughts tentative and incomplete, unable to look ahead, her vocals nervous and shaking, but as the song progresses, her susurrating vocals strengthen and steadily sharpen, her curiosity and excitement and passion for the unknown journey winging her layered vocals upwards into multiple octaves, rippling into the great oceanic unknown.
Hunter Vessel is pure stereo-surround sound of menacing brass and woodwinds that thunder through the ocean on the hunt for whales (and one vessel harpoons the ambergris log), a sinister sound pervading the atmosphere, foreboding changes to come.
Shimenawa, scrim after scrim of ice slicing piping pitches of sho [rigourously defined and nimbly played chords: highly imaginative creativity within self-imposed restraint] sounds like the petroleum/vaseline awakening as it self-glaciates, dripping pearls echoing off searocks, chiming coquillages, fantastical perlaceous sounds springing from the deep, sho reeds fingering through dark currents and piecing together a blueprint of the scintillating spangled septentrional sea, palm fulls of stars thrown like dice repeatedly without end, a coronation procession of gas and dust and dark matter and solar nebula and single cells and multicells and oceans and fossilization and vegetation and mammalization giving way to homo sapiens and culturization and civilization and industrialization and finally disintegration as the somewhat sinister tone of the sho pitches funnel downward into the unknown.
Vessel Shimenawa is Hunter Vessel.
Water sluices through Storm, cascading and dripping water penetrates and storms and soaks the electronica sounds of Storm in a natural ambiance - nature seeping in and taking over, radar bleeps sink into the watery cradle as the mechanical is devoured by nature, Björk's voice shifts between digitally fractured metamorphic concentric swirls and strong singular lines of wailing, evoking the cries of prehistoric aquatic mammals, electronic creaks dance across torrents of water lapping against the ship's hull, boundaries are once again blurred between symphonic and microbeat, forms and formlessness, organic and mechanic, restraint and unrestraint.
Holographic Entrypoint is the flensing ritual, tortuously and oracularly interpreted in a threnodic Noh suite (lyrics describe on-screen flensing) with sibylline howls in the background, the brute primal rawness shattering thought and peeling back the brain and skin and firmament, an ear-numbing and spine-tingling tearing apart in order to birth stars and cells and shells and pearls and whales, the music prehistoric and indigenous and correlates to every aspect of that scene, it's brute and timeless and straight out of your own cells and skin and sinews and heartbeat, the music and scene reminding us that in the whole great Orient (as opposed to Occident) of Japan, China, Korea, India, Tibet, etc, the living entity is understood to be an immaterial transmigrant that puts on bodies and puts them off, destruction is creation.
Ambergris March is an archipelago of sound, bathed in gracefully layered tinkling dizzying collages of chiming crotales (miniature cymbals) and alien glockenspiel and fluted tinkling kalimba, ambergris pieces breaking apart, atoms ecstatically dancing, human-to-whale metamorphosis complete, the spirit of the petrolatum freed, blurred boundaries between indigenous and electronica, symphonic and microbeat, forms and formlessness, organic and mechanic, a driving theme of Drawing Restraint 9.
Cetacea, the chiming crotale notes flow seamlessly, the lyrics reflect the theme - all things are one, in every part you see the whole, the soul of nature and of the universe is your soul and every soul, the universe and nature help you along life's path, the vessel remains at sea, the humans are whales that remain in the sea, the pearls are spilled back into the ocean whence they come, interconnected circular patterns in watery cradle, cycles and interconnectedness locked in a perpetual cycle.
Antarctic Return, solo sho, eerily warped organ sound, the last sound, the sound that commenced with the beginning of Creation and the sound that remains when everything is obliterated.
I think of some lyrics from Björk's The Modern Things -
All the modern things
Like cars and such
Have always existed
They've just been waiting in a mountain
For the right moment
Listening to the irritating noises
Of dinosaurs and people
Dabbling outside
It's their turn now
And the song Nothing But Flowers by Talking Heads -
Here we stand
Like an Adam and Eve
Waterfalls
Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
Birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothin' but flowers
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
You've got it, you've got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got somethin' for dinner
We've got it, we've got it
There was a shoppin' mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
You've got it, you've got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
We've got it, we've got it
Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standin' tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town?
Now, it's nothin' but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong, hey
Once there were parkin' lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
You've got it, you've got it
This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
You've got it, you've got it
I miss the honky tonks
Dairy queens, and 7-Elevens
You've got it, you've got it
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
You've got it, you've got it
I dream of cherry pies, candy bars
And chocolate chip cookies
You've got it, you've got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
You've got it, you've got it
This was a discount store
Now it's turned into a cornfield
You've got it, you've got it
Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle
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