“Instruments are so over”: Was there truth to Björk’s proclamation?
Björk was playing around with some demos when she had an epiphany.
She was experimenting with the instruments when she decided to mute them altogether, immediately realising it sounded better than if she’d left the sounds in. The record that ensued, Medúlla, was created completely void of instruments; all the sounds you hear were made from the human vocal chords and nothing else. A return to the roots of human-based music, if you will.
That wasn’t the entire premise of the record, of course. As is usually the case with Björk’s explorations, the moment she discovered how much she enjoyed music without traditional instruments was the moment she also wandered into the philosophy and psychology of music itself. Before instruments, the voice was the only instrument people had. Something so pure and primal and not at all affected by the modern world or modern technology could be just as, if not even more beautiful.
“I wanted the record to be like muscle, blood, flesh,” she told W Magazine. “We could be in a cave somewhere and one person would start singing, and another person would sing a beat and then the next person sing a melody, and you could just kind of be really happy in your cave. It’s quite rootsy.”
There were a lot of boxes to tick for the record, including enlisting Faith No More’s Mike Patton to give it its rock edge, and a group of Icelandic singers to maintain its familiar classical feel. She even brought in a couple of beatboxers for rhythm and to thicken the sound, and even wanted Beyoncé to feature, who, to her, embodies “the most amazing voice” there is. All of this was her effort to prove that “instruments are so over”. But how true is that claim?
In the context of this specific project, very. The entire album is centred around bending the very rules of what we know to be music, pushing boundaries while also being incredibly restricted. Björk once described the album as “the greatest hits of human spiritualism” and her most political yet. It’s easy to see this in the record’s commanding grooves, the way there’s a hint of playfulness that shows both the simplicity and complexity of existing as a human. Especially on ‘Oceania’, which is arguably one of Björk’s biggest vocal accomplishments ever, also captures her broader concept in visualising an Earth without borders whatsoever; everyone existing in unity.
Achievements like this prove just how successful a project it actually was. Anybody shunning instruments in favour of a more traditional approach will probably fall at the first hurdle. But Björk’s determination and broader artistic vision proved that wasn’t so, her claim that instruments are dead and gone forming an impressively compelling argument. But in the broader case of music as a whole, when all of these nuances dissolve into something more vague, would we still agree?
When Björk made that claim, she meant that physical instrumentation could be a major hindrance to the emotional responses to evocative music. There’s also a metaphorical denotation there, or at least a claim made on the principle of its own fleeting quality. A provocative statement that was true but not permanent, especially when you look at the ultra-achievement that was Biophilia and everything that stood for, coming just a few years after Medúlla. That said, the fact that she went on to use custom instruments plays into her statement, too, especially if you don’t take it so literally.
Because what if it went like this instead – instruments work best when used unconventionally and when they’re used to expand the music and extend the vision. Most of the instruments on Biophilia were quite literally made to suit her own vision, like the Sharpsichord you hear on ‘Sacrifice’. It gives it its natural world feel while also a sense of foreboding, continuing Björk’s Earthly explorations of ritualistic sounds and effects. Björk approaches her instruments like a true innovator, and when you apply that thinking, it’s easy to see truth in her vision and approach to them as something wielded, not taken at the surface level. And the success with which she uses or doesn’t use instruments is merely a testament to approaching them more innovatively than using them merely as a tool.
We need instruments in music, that’s just a simple fact. But when they’re regarded as a means to an end, that’s when the quality of the music itself falters. When treated the way Björk treats them, they get their power back and empower the artist to tell their story better. So was Björk right when she said instruments are over? Over people trivialising them, definitely. Over their fundamental use in modern music? Absolutely not. You just need to think like a true artiste and respect what they’re there for.
