Phương Vy hát nhạc ngoại lời Việt tốt nhưng phần hòa âm có lúc tốt lúc không. Chẳng hạn như bài mở đầu, “Chỉ là giấc mơ qua”, được thổi vào làng sóng jazz với bộ ba (piano, drums, và bass) nhạc nhàng và êm dịu. Ca khúc thứ nhì, “Môi tím”, thì phần hòa âm rời rạc với tiếng sax ru ngủ. Với “If You Go Away,” Phương Vy phát âm tiếng Anh rất chuẩn và tiếng đàn guitar mộc mạc khiến cho tiếng hát của cô rõ ràng hơn. Album khép lại với “Mai” của nhạc sĩ Quốc Dũng với ca từ mỉa mai: “Mai! Anh đã quen em một ngày / Anh đã yêu em một ngày / Một tình yêu quá không may”.

I discovered Björk’s music in 2007, when Volta dropped. I was struck by the vitality of her voice, the clarity of her message, and the ferocity of the production in “Declare Independence.” I enjoyed the eccentric qualities in her avant-garde direction, but I didn’t fully comprehend her artistic vision. She was already way ahead of her time.

In recent weeks, I decided to revisit her studio catalog starting with her 1993 Début and ending with her 2022 Fossora. Björk had meticulously crafted each album to be experienced as a whole. Each album took me on a journey filled with wild imagination, lush orchestration, and pure emotion.

As I immersed myself into her recordings, I wished someone had written a book on Björk’s music and life based on her studio albums. Until then, I would like to put together a website based on reviews of her albums. I read as many essays as I could find and selected the ones that I liked the best.

I made this website for my own reading pleasure, but I also hoped that these essays would open up to anyone who has not discovered the genius of Björk. I wanted the look and feel of the website to be modern; therefore, I set the text in NaN Jaune—a contemporary sans-serif type family, designed by Jérémy Landes. The quirkiness quality in NaN Jaune is a perfect match for Björk’s style. Even though the design is playful, the focus is still on readability.

Enjoy reading!

As Director of Design and Web Services at Antonin Scalia Law School, I led the site redesign and the migration to the new content management system from start to launch and beyond. Read more about my contribution in the school redesign and migration project.

Björk’s 2022 release, Fossora, opens with a big banger, “Atopos,” with flowing clarinets, pounding bass, and hammering beats. While the rhythm connects to our feet, Björk’s voice connects to our soul: “Hope is a muscle / That allows us to connect.” The title track is another club-banger with raging electric beats and a bit of Indian flavor mixed in. On the flip side, “Mycelia” takes us back to the root with a hypnotic vocal ensemble that wordlessly conveys the beauty of nature. Even though Björk takes her music as far as she can, Fossora returns human relationships: love, loss, and connection.

After the breakup Vulnicura (2015) comes the legal-battle Utopia. In “Sue Me,” Björk confronts her baby’s father, “Sue me, sue me, sue me, all you want” and berates him, “The things of the father / They’ve just fucked it all up.” In “Tabula Rasa,” she takes another swipe at him, “Tabula rasa for my children / Not repeating the fuck-ups of the fathers.” I just love the way she phrases “fuck” over the angelic orchestration. Utopia is a beautiful, dark, majestic, and naturalistic—yes, birds chirping too—album that can be enjoyed in its entirety.

In “History of Touches,” Björk reveals, “Every single fuck, we had together / Is in a wondrous time lapse.” Through lush orchestrations and electric beats, Björk opens up her emotional vulnerabilities in her 2015 Vulnicura. It’s a concept album that must be experienced from start to finish. Breakup was a loss for her, but a gain for us.

Thang Máy Sài Gòn is an investigative fiction written in Vietnamese by Thuận and translated into English by Nguyễn An Lý—Elevator in Sài Gòn. I enjoyed reading it so much that I wanted to create a sample page with both the original Vietnamese version and the English translation. I selected the juiciest chapter, in which the translator went beyond the detail from the original text. The sample page is typeset in Nan Rage superfamily, designed by Hugues Gentile, Fanny Hamelin, Fadhl Haqq, Léon Hugues, Jean-Baptiste Morizot, Luke Prowse, Florian Runge, Jolana Sýkorová. Read the sample chapter.

I tried to give my kids a taste of Björk, but they all disliked her. No crime in that. Not everybody can enjoy Björk’s creative genius. I have been immersing myself into the world of Biophilia, Björk’s 2011 release, at late nights and I just wanted to whirl around the mysterious, wondrous “Cosmogony,” in which she explains, “ And they say back then our universe was a cold black egg / Until the god inside burst out and from its shattered shell / He made what became the world we know.” From “Solstice” to “Sacrifice,” the concept album is a satisfying experience. If I have to pick one track from this album, it has to be “Hollow.” It’s a masterwork of orchestration and modernization.

Björk’s 2007 Volta kicks off with the militant marching of “Earth Intruders,” a Timbaland production, in which he incorporates African kora into the mix. “Innocence” sounds as if Street Fighter sound effect is weaving into hip-hop big beat. “I See Who You Are” is slow and mesmerizing with a wicked Asian vibe supplied by Min Xiao-Fen’s spellbinding pipa. “Hope” turns up the Latin groove a notch with pumping bass line. “Declare Independence” makes both personal and political statements. The electro-punk beat hits hard; her voice hits harder. Now, more than ever, we need to raise our flag and fight against authoritarianism. Volta is a masterwork of resistance.

Elevator in Sài Gòn is an investigative novel written in Vietnamese by Đoan Ánh Thuận and translated into English by Nguyễn An Lý. For most books, I prefer reading the original language over the translation, especially in Vietnamese. Since I don’t have access to the original book and a friend had vouched for Ms. Nguyễn’s translating skills, I gave Elevator in Sài Gòn a read. Because this book is a deceive fiction, I don’t want to give away the plot.

Indeed, Ms. Nguyễn is an excellent translator. Here’s an example: “The saying goes, a seventeen year old can break a buffalo’s horn, but in his experience a nineteen year old can’t bear much, neither physically nor mentally, especially when already suffering from a fatal obsession.” Yes, trai mười bảy bẻ gãy sừng trâu indeed.

Apparently, Ms. Thuận is a well-known Vietnamese novelist and yet she was unknown to me until now. I got a kick out of the sex scene, especially this line: “He even, once, asked to see my vulva, and he looked at it with such fascination, parting hairs strand by strand, the way a curious child goes exploring.” I am wanting to read the Vietnamese version.