Bjork and One Little Indian have released the music video for Earth Intruders, the first single from Bjork‘s forthcoming album Volta. The Earth Intruders music video, directed by French animator Michel Ocelot, features animated silhouetted figures dancing and marching to a percussive track while Bjork’s face appears large in the horizon.
According to an interview Bjork did with Pitchfork, the song was inspired by a 2005 trip to post-tsunami Indonesia. She was inspired to think about the human race as “a tribe” marching to a universal beat. Bjork met with Timbaland straight after her time in Indonesia.
“‘Earth Intruders’ was the first beat he (Timbaland) put on, and it just all came up, that sort of fantasy that maybe a tsunami of people would just come and hit the White House and scrape it off the ground and do some justice and spread these people all around the planet… I could see all these people in Indonesia that lost everything just kind of coming up, and everybody in Africa– because they were asking me to go there and fight, to be one of the people to address AIDS– just seeing those people, one sees pictures, but then meeting them is something else. Just a wave of people.”
Earth Intruders includes a metallic industrial beat produced by North American hip hop composer/producer Timbaland and tribal percussion by the African group Konono No 1.
Bjork approached Michel Ocelot, inspired by his work in the 1998 hit Kirikou et la sorcière (Kirikou and the Sorceress) set in an African village. In a little village somewhere in Africa, a boy named Kirikou is born. But he’s not a normal boy, because he knows what he wants and can already speak and walk. His mother tells him how an evil sorceress has dried up their spring and devoured all the males of the village except for one last warrior. Kirikou decides to accompany the warrior to the spring to challenge the sorceress.
Bjork Earth Intruders Credits
Filming was shot by director Michel Ocelot via Nord-Ouest with producer Christophe Rossignon, first assistant directors Anne Lisse Lourdelet-Koehler and Eric Serre, executive producer Eve Francois Machuel.
Visual effects were produced at Mac Guff by VFX supervisor Sebastien Rey, executive producer Alexandra Added, flame artist Fabien Coupez, creative team Michael Armelino, Christophe Barnouin, Yoann Copinet, Antoine Douadi, Karine Ferron, Yurik Figueroa, Damien Gaillardon, Jérôme Gordon, Soline Guyonneau, Amelie Guyot, Thomas Jacquet, Peregrine Mccafferty, and Florence Pernet, and technical director Max Tourret.
Lyrics for Bjork Earth Intruders
We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
A-haaaaaa!
Turmoil! Carnaaaaa-ge!
Here come the earth intruders
We are the paratroopers
The beat of sharpshooters
Comes straight from voodoo
With our feet thumping
With our feet marching
Grinding the skeptics into the soil
Shower of goodness coming to end the doubt—pouring over
Shower of goodness coming to end
We are the earth intruders
We are the sharpshooters
Flock of parachuters
Necessary voodoo
I have guided my bones through some voltage
And love them still
And love them too
Metallic
Carnage
Furiousity
Feel the speed!
We are the earth intruders
We are the sharpshooters,
Flock of parachuters
Necessary voodoo
There is turmoil out there
Carnage! Rambling!
What is to do but dig
Dig bones out of earth
Mud graves
Timber
Morbid trenches
Here come the earth intruders
There’ll be no resistance
We are the cannoneers
Necessary voodoo
And the beast with many heads and arms rolling
Steamroller!
We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
Forgive this tribe!
We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
We are the earth intruders
A-haaaaa!
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
Marching!
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
Marching!
March
March
March
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
Marching voodoo!