On Saturday, April 22, Dirty Projectors and Björk will release an expanded version of their 2010 EP Mount Wittenberg Orca as a Record Store Day Exclusive. Dirty Projectors bandleader David Longstreth wrote the original collection to be performed at a small Manhattan bookstore called Housing Works, and the new edition features 13 bonus tracks, including the live Housing Works performance from 2009, early demos, and archival audio of the band and Björk rehearsing the songs. Today, they’ve unveiled the live from Housing Works performance of ‘On and Ever Onward’, which you can hear below.
“Mount Wittenberg Orca might be my favorite thing from this chapter of Dirty Projectors,” Longstreth said in a statement. “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.”
