Mutual Core

[6] "Eruptions and earthquakes, the building of continents, the formation of mountain ranges and oceanic trenches, all are powerful geological signs of earth's underlying structure and mechanics.

Opposing forces of compression and release, central to continent building and to human feelings, are expressed sonically, and in the app, by the contrast between the shifting of chords in the verse and uplifting chorus.

While the song's themes are universal, the lyrics indicate a specific, autobiographically significant geographical region: the boundary of the north american and eurasian tectonic plates, on which sits Björk's birthplace —Iceland."

[1] "Mutual Core"'s lyrics were inspired by human relationships[10] and by Björk's family decisions, who had to decide where her daughter, Ísadóra, would go to school between New York City and Reykjavík.

[11] David Fricke of Rolling Stone noted that "Björk likens the human emotions – love, physical obsession, changing moods, violent hurt – in songs such as "Mutual Core", "Moon" and "Virus" to natural phenomena: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, lunar phases and contagious disease".

[2] RJ Cubarrubia of Rolling Stone commented that the remix "builds slowly with background bleeps and opaque textures before erupting into a cacophonous rumble".

The remix includes samples from the Traditional composition "Funeral Song (Solomon Islands 1978)", as extracted from the album Spirit of Melanesia by David Fanshawe.

[19] "Mutual Core" is an uptempo[20][21] experimental song, which displays elements from electro,[20] techno,[22] glitch,[22][23] breakcore[24] and ambient,[25] and includes also a choral part during the chorus.

[10] According to Mark Diver of BBC Music during the shift from the verse and the chorus the song "slips from blissful ambience into bombastic electronic percussion, leaving the senses reeling, only to fade back into a comforting lilt".

[27] Luke Turner of NME noted that "[Björk's] voice cracks against the increasing, insistent power of the electronic rhythms, as if recognising our human insignificance in the face of geology", citing the verse "As fast as your fingernail grows / The Atlantic ridge drifts" as an example,[28] and, on a similar note, Odile De Plas of Télérama found the singer's voice "strong, acrobat, guttural and [...] crystalline".

[29] The musical shift occurs when the singer pronounces the words "Core", during which, as described by Nikki Debben in her essay included in the Manual Edition of Biophilia, the "modality switches from minor to major".

[10] The chorus of the song features a vocal crescendo performed by the choir, which juxtaposes with breakcore-influenced beats, which display elements from dub.

[22] Gareth James of Clash praised the album and stated that "when the machine-gun beats do break through on "Mutual Core", they're augmented by a hymnal organ riff and a soaring, unprocessed and unleashed vocal which will leave you breathless".

[30] "Mutual Core" was described as "best" and "climactic" by Helen Brown of The Daily Telegraph, which elected Biophilia as the CD of the Week,[26] and "literally volcanic" by Heather Phares of Allmusic.

[23] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian praised the composition of the album and stated "There's something audacious and impressive about the way "Hollow" attempts to strike a weird balance between menace and calm, the vocals as lulling as the staccato backing is unsettling.

Or "Mutual Core"'s repeated shifts from a wheezing keyboard – it was doubtless built in a laboratory by the provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and professor Brian Cox, but it sounds like a 13th-century portative organ – to electronic bombardment".

[32] Möhammed Choudhery of Consequence of Sound analysed the use of Björk's voice in the album, stating: Her unique utility of the English language gives her words a quirky, idiosyncratic edge, allowing lines like "if you forget my name, you'll go astray/ like a killer whale" to ring somehow striking.

Said masterstrokes and quirks are well intact here, as is evident in the asteroid-bass volley of "Mutual Core" and lead single "Crystalline"'s apocalyptical breakbeat coda.

The aforementioned "Mutual Core" and "Crystalline" can be assured a spot on any and all future Best of Björk compilations, compelling in how they blend archaic instrumentation with blistering electronica.

[35] Andy Gill of The Independent gave a negative review of the album, praising only the choral elements, stating that: "they're a constant delight as she reflects upon her desire for the "dangerous gifts" of elemental nature, the lightning-flash of creative inspiration ("Thunderbolt"); muses about being a bead threaded upon a DNA chain ("Hollow"); explores the ethically neutral, natural attraction of parasite to host ("Virus"); admires the creative force of volcanic energy ("Mutual Core")".

[6] "Mutual Core" app features a video game in which the player arranges geological layers in the same way as an accordion[37] to play chords.

[41] A music video for the song was commissioned by the director of Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Jeffrey Deitch.

[44] Huang said about the making process: "There's a lot of volcanic and earthy stuff in the video, we put Björk in quite a few uncomfortable set-ups when we were filming, but she was game for anything.

[47] It was digitally released on November 13, 2012 on MOCA YouTube's channel, MOCAtv, as part of a series of music videos called ART+MUSIC which features collaborations between artists and musicians.

In the beginning of the video, soil crumbles down, as Björk appears, buried to her waist in the sand, wearing a golden dress (by Michael van der Ham),[45] a brooch on her shoulder designed by the singer herself[46] and a blue wig, holding a rock.

During this part of the video, images of Björk singing in a smoky setting alternate with more rocks uniting to the main two, while their Björk-shaped strata secrete a substance similar to lava from their mouth.

[49] Tom Breihan of Stereogum stated that the video is "a beguilingly strange vision" and that "as the song unfolds, the images reach an explosive conclusion that resembles a fucked-up metal album cover",[50] on a similar note, Gregory Adams of Exclaim!

[51] A poster on The Huffington Post wrote that the video, which he billed as "hypnotic", "takes viewers on a strange spirit quest gone awry".

[60] Abdullah Saeed of The Atlantic compared the video to her previous works and commented: Back when she first began experimenting with electronic producer Mark Bell on Homogenic, Cunningham style complemented her music perfectly for videos like "All is Full of Love" Now, a decade and a half later, her music explores biology, a discipline naturally interpreted by Huang's visual sense.

[72][76][77][78][79] While reviewing Björk's show at the New York Hall of Science, Will Hermes of the website PembrokeMayball stated that "during 'Mutual Core', she sang of tectonic plates under a circle of projection screens illustrating the phenomena, and licked her lips after a line about how 'the Atlantic ridge drifts' like she could feel that motion tingle beneath her skin".