The Icelandic songstress’s eighth studio album. Definitely not as strong as past work, but still hovering in that delightful space that is uniquely hers. Large portions of the album were composed on the iPad, and in the run-up to the release a series of multimedia apps paired with each song allowed, among other things, user remixes.
image courtesy of somekindofawesome.com
Whatever their ilk, the more effective tracks on the album ignite in the fashion most becoming of Björk: shot through with effervescence in the arrangements that have always lent her style its distinctness, but now framed by a more mature, pointed focus. As with natural selection, the change can register as hit-or-miss, and Biophilia sometimes works against its own exuberant intentions. There’s a less-showy control displayed in the album’s first half, neatly translating as outrage (or outrageousness) present in her earlier work curbed by creeping melancholy or violent creation given over to tender-handed uncreation. In either case, it’s a new sonic manifestation for her. Whether this and other elements are an admixture of the snowier, softer parts of Vespertine and the breathy exhilaration of Medúlla or a growing twilight side to her music coming from somewhere else won’t be evident until later, of course, when Björk returns to the studio and makes her next album on whatever newfangled technological doodad we’re using to interface on then.
Read the rest here: Spectrum Culture review: Björk – Biophilia
Well done, Joe. We are Bjork fans…also Sigur Ros.
R.