ICYMI, Björk has been on a mission to shut down Iceland’s open-pen salmon farming, an industry led by Norwegian billionaires, which – as the musician told Dazed earlier this month – is “evil both for the fish and the whole fjord”. Part of this fight involves teaming up with Rosalía for a new song, which will raise funds for the ongoing legal battle, and now it’s finally arrived.
Titled “Oral”, the song is produced by Björk and Rosalía alongside Sega Bodega. The Carlota Guerrero-directed video, meanwhile, sees their eerie digital clones wield swords and practise martial arts against a space-age backdrop (watch above).
The song itself was written between Homogenic (1997) and Vespertine (2001), as Björk says in her Dazed interview, but wasn’t released at the time. “It was too poppy and didn’t really fit either of those albums so I put it on salt, and because we didn’t have laptops then, the analogue master tapes were archived,” she explains. “Every three years, I would remember the song and ask my manager to go look for it, but he could never find it because I kept giving him the wrong name.”
The name finally came back to the artist when watching a court case on CNN last March, which conveniently lined up with a re-release to benefit the fish farming cause. As detailed at the start of the “Oral” video, both Björk and Rosalía are donating all of their rights to income generated by the song to the non-profit Aegis, with their record companies agreeing to do the same. All funds raised will support legal fees for protesters taking action against the intensive fish farms.
Watch “Oral” above.