Love Letter To A Record: GLVES On Björk's 'Homogenic'

Music Feeds’ Love Letter To A Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, First Nations alt-pop artist GLVES pens a heartfelt tribute to Björk’s third studio album, 1997’s ‘Homogenic’. It comes as GLVES shares her long-awaited debut EP ‘Belonging’, a four-track journey through post-traumatic growth, transforming pain into possibility and scars into blossoms.

“For a long time, I rejected flowers, I rejected softness,” GLVES explains of the record. “I thought it was weakness, that I had to lean into masculinity to be taken seriously. But flowers have always been part of my lineage… Through this EP, I’ve come to see that softness is its own strength, and that to bloom, even when you’ve known darkness, is a kind of power.” Stream GLVES freshly minted EP, and read her love letter to Björk’s ‘Homogenic’, down below.

GLVES – Belonging

GLVES: Dear Homogenic,

You were the first time I could hear the landscape inside sound. Not just notes, but earth, sky and history. You took me into an inner landscape, one that lit up my imagination, a place I had never seen but somehow could hear in my bones.

Björk is a sonic wizard. With you she cast spells into my mind, and suddenly electronic music felt elemental. Alone in my room, lying on my bed I heard the desolate chill of Tasmania/lutruwita in my earliest years, the red desert storms of the Northern Territory/Warramungu country, all folded into your world. These landscapes have always lived inside me, and you gave me a way to hear them, and even hear ones I have never physically been to before.

Your songs comforted the emptiness and darkness I carried. ‘Jóga’ mirrored my hunger, for meaning, for beauty, for life itself. It still squeezes my heart, it’s a huge epic song. ‘Hunter’ felt intimate and searching, a reminder of how desire and survival intertwine. ‘Bachelorette’ was pure drama, determination, thunder and fragility at once, its final vocal hauntingly beautiful. The strings throughout are orchestral and stunning, and as someone who has always loved history and period dramas, my head and heart were instantly at home in these sounds.

You taught me that cinematic energy can live in electronic music. Old and new, ancient and futuristic, it is a paradox I love. It is how I feel as a human, tied to my history, but reaching toward the future and imagining new worlds.

Björk’s wildness is freedom. As a woman, her creative energy feels like a map, wild and gentle, vulnerable and strong. She reminds me to experiment, to trust my strangeness, to create and express.

The whole album washed over me like waves, reminding me of my place. You did not just soundtrack a moment, you cracked something open in me. You showed me that music could hold the whole world, and that the vastness, desires, deserts, storms, cold Tasmanian skies, could live inside a song, and inside me too.

Love always,

GLVES

GLVES’ debut EP ‘Belonging’ will be released on vinyl and is available to pre-order here.