Dirty Projectors and Björk have shared a previously unreleased version of “On and Ever Onward”.
Recorded live at a small Manhattan bookstore called Housing Works, it’s a taster for the expanded edition of their long out-of-print 2010 EP Mount Wittenberg Orca, due for release on Record Store Day.
You can hear it below.
The new expanded edition adds 13 bonus tracks of never-before-released material, including the live Housing Works performance from 2009, early demos of Mount Wittenberg Orca and archival audio of the band and Björk rehearsing the material.
“Mount Wittenberg Orca might be my favourite thing from this chapter of Dirty Projectors,” says David Longstreth. “It feels like sort of a dark horse in the catalog. Which I guess is kinda funny, considering it’s a collaborative record with Björk. We were overwhelmed with the hype around the band at the time and purposely under-messaged it. But I love these songs. And as a basically live-in-studio album, it’s the only official release that shows how this lineup really cooked as a band. The performances and engineering hold up really well. And of course Björk elevates us to a different level of protean majesty. I remember being spontaneously in tears during her vocal takes for “Sharing Orb”. I’m also excited to share the original Housing Works show, in its raw beauty, as well as the writing tapes and rehearsals that show how the whole thing came together. Thanks for listening.”