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Apr 18, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Ryan Muir

Dirty Projectors and Björk have shared a previously unreleased live version of “On and Ever Onward,” which was recorded in 2009 in a small Manhattan bookstore called Housing Works. It’s taken from the expanded edition of their 2010 EP, Mount Wittenberg Orca, which is due out this Saturday for Record Store Day. Listen below.

The collaboration came together as a benefit for the bookstore, but instead of performing existing material, Dirty Projectors and Björk quickly wrote and rehearsed all new songs, rehearsing for three days at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn and then recording the songs there with producer Nicolas Vernhes. Most of the EP was recorded live in the stuido, with overdubbing only of the lead vocals and solos. At the time Dirty Projectors’ lineup included vocalists Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, and Haley Dekle. The expanded edition of the EP includes the Housing Works concert, as well as various demos and rehearsal recordings (check out the full tracklist below).

Dirty Projectors’ frontman David Longstreth had this to say in a press release: “Mount Wittenberg Orca might be my favorite thing from this chapter of Dirty Projectors. 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.”

For Record Store Day, Longstreth will be doing a DJ set at Amoeba Music in Hollywood this Saturday from 4-5 p.m. PST.

In 2020 Dirty Projectors released 5EPs, a 20-song anthology that collected five EPs the band released that year, all via Domino. Dirty Projectors’ last regular full-length album was 2018’s Lamp Lit Prose.

Björk released a new album, Fossora, last year via One Little Independent.

Mount Wittenberg Orca (Expanded Edition) Tracklist:

Side A