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The Music From Drawing Restraint 9

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Björk

 
The Music From Drawing Restraint 9
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Average: 3.5 (91 ratings)

Björk scores! Bewitching, mystical soundtrack music.

  • We Say...

    Review by Michael Azerrad


    Soundtracks are strange beasts: they require musicians to hide much of their light under a bushel. Remarkably, Björk sings on only three tracks here (and only then, just barely) and much of the music is instrumental, yet Drawing Restraint 9 serves as not only effective film music but as an expression of one of the most distinctive and visionary musical minds of the last decade.

    Directed by Matthew Barney (the monumental Cremaster series), Drawing Restraint 9 is about "the relationship between self-imposed resistance and creativity," and beginning with the scarcity of Björk's remarkable voice, virtually every facet of the album celebrates the liberating effect of limitation. No culture explores that phenomenon more deeply than the Japanese, whose music and sensibility pervade this challenging album as much as Björk's.

    The exotic Japanese instrument the sho pipe, played by virtuoso Mayumi Miyata, looms large here ("Pearl," "Shimenawa," "Antarctic Return"), and the instrument itself is an exercise in rigor. The sho's palette is limited to ten notes that were dictated by an 8th-century emperor, and its unearthly sound — 17 reeds sounding complex note clusters — is like a numinous, forlorn accordion.

    But the true glory of self-imposed limitation resides in the vocals; each singer here has a rigorous, individual technique. On the opening "Gratitude," the most song-like composition of the bunch (and reminiscent of Vespertine), Will Oldham's self-consciously broken tenor slowly but uncertainly skates across tinkling samples that sound with an unearthly precision; when a children's chorus eventually emerges in haunting counterpoint, the effect is explosive.

    On "Pearl," Björk electronically manipulates throat singer Tagaq into a polyrhythmic collage of exercised munchkins (recalling her previous album, the vocals-only Medulla). On "Bath," she recorded her own voice so closely that you can practically hear the air hissing over her lips, and on "Cetacea" she soars above levitational crotale bells; "Storm" is the most programmatic of the bunch, very literally referring to a crisis at sea, her voice bestowing a serene hysteria. Coming right on its heels, "Holographic Entry Point," a virtually a cappella vocal performance by Shiro Nomura in the Noh style, is astonishing, electrifying.

    Björk verges from the Japanese theme with "Hunter Vessel," which begins with foghorn brass and morphs to a lambent music of the spheres. The film takes place on a Japanese whaling boat and everything from the track titles —l; "Cetacea," "Hunter Vessel," "Ambergris March," etc. — to the palpably aqueous sonic ambiance support the nautical theme.

    All of the music is thoroughly of a piece with Barney's sensibility; Barney happens to be her companion, but their work shares some key sensibilities — both create highly intricate, almost bafflingly idiosyncratic aesthetics that grapple with the corporeal and the technological. Björk continues her collaborations with electronic mainstays Akira Rabelais, Mark Bell, Valgeir Sigursson and Leila, but their work never overshadows — always heightens — the traditional Japanese sounds, which here feel more otherworldly than any synthesizer. Tense and dreamy, timelessly organic and profoundly modern, Drawing Restraint stands poised in a bewitching interzone of tradition and invention.

  • They Say...

    Review by Heather Phares, All Music Guide

    Though Björk has written music for films before, her collaboration with Matthew Barney on Drawing Restraint 9 is a much deeper and more natural pairing, which makes sense, considering that they're partners in life (and now in art). Björk's pieces for the film reflect its fusions of the contemporary with the ancient, and the organic with the technological -- themes that she has dealt with in her own work, especially on later albums like Medúlla. The motif of West meeting East is also prominent in the visual and musical halves of Drawing Restraint 9: shot in Nagasaki Bay, the film depicts a pair of occidental guests (played by Barney and Björk) who visit a Japanese whaling ship and evolve into whales to escape drowning when a storm hits. Details such as costumes inspired by Shinto marriage robes, a tea ceremony, and whaling boat culture are echoed in Björk's music: Drawing Restraint 9 begins with "Gratitude," which uses Will Oldham's vulnerable vocals, a children's choir, and Zeena Parkins' harp to bring to life a 1946 letter written to General MacArthur by a Japanese citizen. Thanking the general for lifting the ban on whaling, the writer's gratitude comes from "my family and the ancient sea," underscoring the film's connections between life, death, sacrifice, and transformation. Meanwhile, the wistful "Shimenawa" and "Antarctic Return" incorporate the sho (played here by sho virtuoso Mayumi Miyata), a Japanese free-reed mouth organ that produces subtle and complex tone clusters that sound organic and ethereal at the same time. The album's climactic track, "Holographic Entrypoint," is inspired by the traditions of Noh theater; the alternately gruff and wailing vocals and wood block percussion are the essence of simplicity, and all the more powerful and eerie because they're so simple. Similarly, "Pearl" pairs the sho with heavy, primal, Medúlla-like rhythmic breathing and gasps that sometimes sound like scraping, once again showing Björk's willingness to integrate sounds that might not be conventionally beautiful into her work without diluting them. Perhaps the most striking thing about Drawing Restraint 9 is how seamlessly it blends and contrasts beauty and violence. "Ambergris March" is all sparkling, dreamy delight, while "Hunter Vessel" mixes tense, stabbing brass with reflective passages. The handful of tracks Björk sings on embody this duality as well: the layers of her vocals on "Bath" are appropriately soothing, but on "Storm," they add to the track's chaotic power. Though Drawing Restraint 9 is more expansive and abstract than Medúlla, it's in a similarly challenging and rewarding vein, and bodes well for future Björk/Barney collaborations.

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