Dirty Projectors + Bjork – Mount Wittenberg Orca

Mount Wittenberg Orca

Expanded Edition of the long out of print Mount Wittenberg Orca LP, Dirty Projectors’ critically acclaimed collaborative album with Icelandic legend Björk. The original seven-song collection was written to be performed unamplified in a small Manhattan bookstore called Housing Works inspired by a conversation between Dirty Projectors band leader David Longstreth and Björk about the small theaters in Italy where opera was born in the 1500s. The result feels like part children’s story, part choral music from some strange future. It’s unlike anything else in the Projectors’ body of work: drums and guitars are all but absent. It’s all about voices here – and the voices are astonishing. Björk sounds seismic and elemental and Longstreth, sharing lead vocal duties, intones with his trademark croon. The Projectors’ singers Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle add magical 3-part vocal harmonies. The recording was informed by the simple, direct feel of early rock & roll recordings from the ’50s. The band and Björk rehearsed for three days at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, and then recorded the songs as quickly and as live as possible, overdubbing only lead vocals and solos. The 2xLP Expanded Edition adds 13 bonus tracks of never-before-released material including the live Housing Works performance from 2009, early demos of Mount Wittenberg Orca and archival audio of the band and Bjork rehearsing the material. This is the definitive version of Mount Wittenberg Orca. (This is a 2023 Record Store Day release. )