Vulnicura Strings (Vulnicura: The Acoustic Version – Strings, Voice and Viola Organista Only)
| Vulnicura Strings (The Acoustic Versions – Strings, Voice and Viola Organista Only) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Remix album by Björk | ||||
| Released | 6 November 2015 | |||
| Genre | Acoustic | |||
| Length | 63:56 | |||
| Label | One Little Indian | |||
| Producer | Björk | |||
| Björk chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 80/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| The Line of Best Fit | 9/10 |
| musicOMH |   |
| Pitchfork Media | 6.8/10 |
| Record Collector | |
Vulnicura Strings (The Acoustic Versions – Strings, Voice and Viola Organista Only), or simply Vulnicura Strings, is an acoustic album released by Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk as a companion to her 2015 album, Vulnicura. Vulnicura Strings has been described as a more uncompromising and intimate take on Björk's breakup album, featuring strings-only versions of the Vulnicura tracks, with the omission of "History of Touches".
On 20 January 2015, Björk rush-released Vulnicura, her eighth studio album, after the album leaked online just days after being announced. Vulnicura was a critical success, with praise centering on Björk's strong and intimate lyrics, her powerful string arrangements, and the beats created by Björk and her co-producers Arca and The Haxan Cloak.
On 5 October 2015, Vulnicura Strings was officially announced after some online shops listed the item with few details other than the name. Björk described the genesis of the project on her official Facebook page: "While I was working on Vulnicura, it became one of the most magical thing(s) both musically and spiritually to unite the electronics and the acoustic instruments in an almost romantic way: to prove they can coexist!!... But while working on it I felt somehow for the first time, this was an album that could take another version: a reveal, to simply have the acoustics stand on their own for the folks who wanna indulge even further into the wooden timeless side of this music. With no techno."
She elaborated elsewhere, "For me, strings stand for the nerves of the human bodies. The voice and wind instruments are the lungs. Beats are for dancing and your heart pumping, but when you stroke stringed instruments, it's like your nerves vibrating. It's why we sympathise so easily with strings, I think, especially when you're going through painful stuff. You just want to grab a clip-on mic and get that... 'urrrrrrrrr'. It creates this angsty, almost uncomfortable sound – the sound of really raw emotion."
For the stripped down versions of the Vulnicura songs, Björk kept the vocal takes of the original studio album but decided to use alternate takes of the acoustic instruments recorded during the original recording sessions, stating, "I dug out the more close-up pick up miked versions, other sonic point-of-views...". The album includes additional string solos by Una Sveinbjarnardóttir, who was a part of the Icelandic String Octet that joined Björk on stage for her 1998 Homogenic Tour.
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