Future Forever (2017)ījörk described her most recent album Utopia as “paradise” compared with the “hell” of its predecessor, Vulnicura. It’s a world away from the simple DayGlo pleasure of It’s Oh So Quiet, but it’s a stunning song: tentative new love wrapped in glitchy electronics and otherworldly choral vocals. It says something about Björk’s gradual drift away from the mainstream that Hidden Place was Vespertine’s lead single. Big Time Sensuality (1993)ĭebut offered two opposing views of early-90s dancefloor hedonism – the self-explanatory There’s More to Life Than This v Big Time Sensuality’s glorious, saucer-eyed paean to ecstasy: “I know I’m a bit too intimate / But something huge is coming up.” The Fluke remix trumps the album version, setting her delirious growls to chugging electronics. But All Is Full of Love is utterly beautiful without any accompanying visuals: romantic, optimistic and drowsily erotic. Its Chris Cunningham-directed video attracted so much attention that the song behind it occasionally gets overlooked.
But Stonemilker’s music is at odds with its lyrical despondency: Arca’s echoing beats nestling beneath a beautiful string arrangement, with the intensity of her vocal married to an exquisite melody.Īll Is Full of Love. Stonemilker (2015)ījörk’s divorce album, Vulnicura, is frequently demanding – but rewarding – listening, the sound reflecting the raw emotions it deals with. That said, the sense of wonder that informs Biophilia’s scientific explorations is perfectly summarised by Cosmogony’s sighing array of electronics, brass and wordless voices, her wide-eyed vocal and its almost showtune-like chorus. Cosmogony (2011)ījörk’s later albums are conceptual pieces that invariably work better as a whole: something is lost by removing individual songs from their context. Its luscious, swirling strings are underpinned by a train-track rhythm and its eerie mood is hard to shake. The problem with pretending to lay an egg on the Oscars red carpet is that it will overshadow the song you are there to perform: more people know about Björk’s swan dress than Selmasongs’ centrepiece I’ve Seen It All, a disturbing, dark duet with Thom Yorke. As a musical representation of the dizziness of new love, however, it is perfect. On one level, Arisen My Senses sounds like chaos: crashing rhythms and overlapping voices that render the lyrics largely incomprehensible, alongside unpredictable scatterings of harp and explosions of electronics. The Oscars dress that everyone remembers … Photograph: Rex 12. The moment when everything dies away except Björk singing “I love him” is among the most powerful in her catalogue. You can hear the results fluttering alongside a harp on Pagan Poetry, a track that starts out being serene and chilled, and gradually works up a striking erotic charge as it goes. Pagan Poetry (2001)ījörk’s original concept for Vespertine involved having “icy”-sounding musical boxes specially made. Its infectiously giddy mood is potentiated by the sound of an Indian orchestra, recorded in Mumbai by Talvin Singh. Venus As a Boy (1993)Īpparently Björk’s most-covered song – something like 30 different versions exist – Venus As a Boy sounds utterly lovestruck: “His wicked sense of humour / Suggests exciting sex”. It is a fizzing, electrifying blast of beats and distorted thumb-piano that embodies the lyrics: “metallic carnage ferocity”. Earth Intruders (2007)ījörk has always had great taste when it comes to collaborators – never more so than on Earth Intruders, which pitches the hip-hop auteur Timbaland against the Congolese “all-powerful likembe orchestra” Konono No 1 to startling effect.
But Army of Me also works as a ferocious statement of individual artistic intent (“Self-sufficiency, please! / And get to work”) bedecked with John Bonham drums and dirty synthesiser. The opening track of Post was, apparently, the sound of Björk telling her brother to buck his ideas up. Co-written with the Bond composer David Arnold and Jah Wobble, Play Dead keys into the era’s revival of interest in soundtracks and easy listening, but never sounds like a pastiche: the song is too dramatic and powerful. Play Dead (1993)ījörk’s first two albums often feel like scrapbooks of musical ideas floating around the non-Britpop 90s: house, trip-hop, the Chemical Brothers’ distorted breaks, Aphex-y electronica.
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