Rebekka Karijord today announces the release of her new album The Bell Tower due out April 25 via Bella Union and available to pre-order here. The album is her second on Bella Union following the success of her collaborative project Complete Mountain Almanac, with Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National, whose self-titled debut was released in January 2022. To accompany today’s announcement Rebekka has shared first single “Sanctuary”, one of the most emotionally charged moments of the album and a track that encompasses both The Bell Tower’s sonic signature and overarching theme. As the voice samples’ cool tones bubble forth, Rebekka sings of the beauty of the natural world, and the grief involved with watching it slowly be erased. Click HERE to listen.
““Sanctuary” is one of those songs that wrote itself,” she says. “It’s a song for my daughters–they’re seven and ten–and they grew up in nature, nature is their sanctuary. That’s their safe place. They both know what climate change is, but how do you as a grown-up tell a child how drastic it is? It’s so massive to comprehend, and it’s impossible as a parent to look your kid in the eyes and say, ‘This is not going to be like this forever,’ you know?” Musically, “Sanctuary” reflects this aching sorrow, its placid tones intermingling with its evocative lyrics. “My Daughter, have the Springs gone silent? / Will you ever dare to have a child?” Rebekka sings softly. “Or has the ocean reached your doorstep? And the sun turned hostile?”
From early on in her artistic journey, acclaimed composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Rebekka Karijord has been fascinated by the human voice. Known for her sweeping film scores (like for the Hulu Greta Thunberg documentary I Am Greta) as well as her work with artist Jessica Dessner and The National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner in the group Complete Mountain Almanac, she brings a unique musical perspective and skillset to every one of her projects. The Bell Tower, her seventh solo album and one of her most ambitious records to date, is many things at once: it’s an ode to our planet in peril; it’s a missive from a mother to her children; it’s a meditation on humanity and our place within the natural world. On top of that, it’s also an experiment, something that evolved from an idea into an innovative and all-encompassing work that touches upon 19th-century poetry, environmental activism, and the cross-section of digital and organic instrumentation.
“Six years ago, I got in touch with the linguistic department at Stockholm University, who do voice research with contact microphones for people with hearing and vocal disabilities,” Rebekka explains. “I found that work really interesting, and they actually made a few of the microphones for me, which are technically really amazing. I ended up recording 25 female, non-binary, and male singers from all over the world, and built a sample instrument out of the individual voices, as well as my own.” This instrument is the basis upon which The Bell Tower is constructed, and the result is breathtaking—by manipulating the pitch, delay, and other characteristics of the samples, Rebekka unlocks an entire universe of sound, essentially all originating from the human voice.
This process went on for some time, and after the sample instrument had been built, Rebekka realized that, more than just an interesting experiment in sound, she had the beginnings of a record on her hands. “I wrote some pieces, but I felt that while the samples on their own were strong, something was missing. I contacted Roomful of Teeth, the American voice ensemble which features Caroline Shaw as a member, and they were super excited about the material.” Rebekka began writing and scoring music for eight members of Roomful of Teeth, but the nascent collection of songs still required more of a focal point. While tinkering with the music she had thus far, Rebekka came across an episode of the podcast On Being with an interview with the Buddhist poet, translator, and philosopher Joanna Macy, and something clicked.
“I heard a sequence where she was talking about ‘grief over a changing world,’ and that really became the record’s headline,” explains Rebekka. “With her permission, I started trying to set music to poems by Rainer Maria Rilke that she had translated. I felt the poems expressed something I have been yearning to write about myself. He described a longing for the natural world, for a deep belonging—but he also describes the Anthropocene and disintegration from nature, way ahead of his time. There is so much longing and movement in his words, so much intuition and sensitivity. That’s a great starting point for music.” The album’s title itself comes from Rilke’s poem “Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower”, referencing the transformative power of art, that can change fear into something beautiful and valuable.
Through this lens of poetry, Rebekka was able to contemplate the impact of climate change on not just our society at large, but on us individually as human beings bearing witness to its destruction. On the opening track of The Bell Tower, the emotional and reverent “Lacrimosa”, Rebekka directly samples a portion of the interview with Macy that sparked the album’s theme. “It seems clear that we who are alive now are […] witnessing something for our planet that has not happened at any time before […] There’s a need some of us feel, I know I do, to what looks like it must disappear, to say, ‘Thanks, you’re beautiful.’” The use of the digital voice instrument, with its clear and pure tones, adds to the solemnity of Macy’s words. It feels as if it is tapping into something ancient and spiritual, which in turn serves as a healing balm for the anxiety one feels when broaching the massive topic of environmentalism.
With Macy and Rilke now part of her songwriting process, Rebekka had to make the decision whether to add her own voice to the mix—literally. “I had always thought of this as a choir record, but I wasn’t intending to have my own voice in it, although I did sketch some songs with my own voice” she says. “When I recorded Roomful of Teeth at the Grieg Hall in Bergen, the choir parts were amazing, they’re so good at all the extended techniques. After sitting with the recordings, I realized that the album needed a personal perspective, to be able to truly connect with the themes I was approaching .” As such, Rebekka’s voice serves as an anchor around the ethereal qualities of the vocal samples and choir recordings, sharing her own perspective with the listener.
While Rebekka has extensive experience in production, The Bell Tower is the first of her solo records she has produced completely on her own. To execute a project of this scope, she felt like a singular vision was needed to make sure everything stayed coherent. The album was then mixed by David Chalmin in Biarritz, France, and mastered by Taylor Dupree in New York, which was “when things really fell into place,” according to Rebekka. “They really understood the material.”
Rebekka’s vision is perhaps most evident on “Sanctuary”, the lead single off The Bell Tower and one of the album’s most arresting moments. Much like Joanna Macy’s earnest words on grieving nature, “Sanctuary” tries to imagine a path forward for those of us who cannot bear the effects of climate change, and what our current efforts mean to future generations. Addressed to Rebekka’s two young daughters, “Sanctuary” is at its core an expression of a mother’s love in the face of the unimaginable and is the most personal song on the album.
“Serenade”, another highlight from The Bell Tower, also looks towards the future. The track begins with the euphonious cooing of the vocal instrument, until Rebekka’s soprano voice comes in, supported by lush harmonies. ““Serenade” is a love song to nature. It’s like laying down on a bed of moss and just being submerged in that feeling and forgetting yourself,” she says. Another track that embodies this sentiment is “Fugue”, which blends elements of electronica, experimental music, classical, and ambient. It’s perhaps the track where the technicality of the sample instrument is at its most bare, with several voices interlocking in uplifting arpeggios.
With all these different themes married together on one album that came together so organically, The Bell Tower is a body of work that must be listened to with intent in order to be fully appreciated. Whether it be Joanna Macy’s Buddhist environmentalism, Rilke’s spiritual reverence, the exploration of the full range of the human voice, a mastery of music production, or just the need for a quiet place to sit and think, The Bell Tower provides the listener with a fully-realized experience of what it feels like to live through the present. “Historically, we’ve been using nature in theater, in film, in music, as something that is a set design for our lives, where we are the protagonists,” Rebekka says. “An idea that has been resonating with me lately, what we need to deeply understand, is that we are all made of the same stardust. When we destroy nature, we are destroying ourselves. That’s what writing this album has been—an attempt to go deeper into that notion.”
The Bell Tower tracklist:
- Lacrimosa
- Sanctuary
- Fugue
- Serenade
- You, Mountain
- City By The Sea
- Megafauna
- 9th Duino Elegy
- Earth
- Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower
- Vespera
