Album review: Bjork, Biophillia

Ignore, if you can, the fact that Biophilia was partially recorded using an Apple iPad and that it is being released as a series of specially designed apps – this may be the most 21st century of albums, but first and foremost it is one heck of a long player.

BJÖRK

Biophillia

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One Little Indian, £13.99

Ignore, if you can, the fact that Biophilia was partially recorded using an Apple iPad and that it is being released as a series of specially designed apps – this may be the most 21st century of albums, but first and foremost it is one heck of a long player.

There is a cosmological and ecclesiastical tone to the composition – many tracks feature a specially invented instrument, the gameleste – but essentially this is remarkable and inventive pop music.

Björk’s voice no longer alienates with its more eccentric swoops, and makes a potentially uncomfortably invasive song such as Virus a cuddly chum.

Instrumentally it chimes and rings as if blessed with all the whistles and bells, but also boasts some taut techno as she plunders from all contemporary genres.

The most devastating of these raids comes towards the close of Crystalline, a drum and bass break which cuts the listener off at the knees. It is a devastating last minute which you just will not want to stop.

Lyrically Björk addresses geological and astrophysical matters as she creates a musical universe which is a place of joy and wonder. Mutual Core encapsulates that in a mere five minutes, and that is without downloading a single application.

At face value, Dark Matter is music for a new religion, otherworldly yet gritty as if of this earth. Hollow is a chorale conceived in an industrial environment, finding beauty in the ugly machinery.

Biophillia is a thoroughly rock’n’roll record despite not discernably featuring a single traditional rock’n’roll instrument. These songs can all be enhanced and altered through the iPad, a concept which makes an MP3 download sound as old-fashioned as vinyl.

For once it can be said without fear of contradiction that this is the new breed you should be digging.

COLIN SOMERVILLE

Download this: Crystalline, Mutual Core