Mount Wittenberg Orca, the brain child of heavy indie hitters Bjork and The Dirty Projectors was recently released on CD and vinyl two years after it’s initial release in 2009. Originally recorded to benefit National Geographic Society’s Ocean Initiatives, the collection was available exclusively online for a donation of 7 dollars or more.
The EP is only 21 minutes long, but makes up for longevity with potency that packs a powerful punch of oceanic avant-garde. The Dirty Projectors show a softer side, leaving behind the high production of previous album Bitta Orca for the more unpolished and intimate feel of live recordings and Dave Longstreth’s super sultry upright base.
Mount Wittenberg breaches the precipis of experimental music with streamlined, effortless composition using intricate melody pairings as a base for Bjork’s stirring vocal aerobatics as she sings from the perspective of a mother whale.
Longstreth wrote the album in less than a month after sighting a colony of orca off the California coast at, you guessed it, Mount Wittenberg. The entire EP was recorded with track by track with live takes over the course of three days at the Rare Book Room in New York.
Mount Wittenberg Orca is raw, informal, radical, and fluid. Listening to it feels like submersion, almost like being eaten and spit out by the sea, in a good way.
Final verdict: WPG, worth a listen, but not a classic.
