Bjork - Medulla

Medulla: The title of Bjork’s new long player, literally means “The inner core of certain organs or body structures, such as the marrow of bone”. Unsuprisingly, this is not the first biological reference in Bjorks album naming schema, her previous “Vespertine” meaning “opening or blooming in the evening” and former, “Homogenic”, meaning “having only one allele of a gene” both allude to natural and humanist themes.

“You show me continents
I see islands
You count centuries
I blink my eyes”

Oceania

The human body is no better personified than in Bjork’s latest creation, whose 14 tracks are composed primarily of manipulated vocals, choirs, and other odd oral auditory emissions. This includes the percussion and bass tracks, whose classic Matmos-style blip-and-clack beats stutter out of the mouth of legendary cult japanese beat-box artist “Dokaka” (whose website includes a hilarious Nirvana cover) and hip-hop beatbox pioneer Rahzel of the mellow pop-instrumental rap group The Roots. Other guests include rock chameleon Mike Patton, singer/songwriter Robert Wyatt (on the duet “Submarine”), classical vocalist Gregory Purnhagen, Inuit throat singer Tagaq and the Icelandic and London Choirs. The only guest whose contribution I couldn’t get into was the Inuit throat singer, whose strange garbled noises and labored breathing sound like a wounded hedgehog dying in a burrow.

For those of you who enjoyed the subdued evening lullabies of Vespertine, you will definitely enjoy the layers of harmonic vocals and esper-like quality to this album. After a while of listening you will barely notice that the beautiful music you are hearing lacks any sort of physical instrumentation. To be fair, the whole album is not ENTIRELY made up of vocals; there are a smattering of soft synthesizer and programming elements from long time collaborator and friend Mark Bell. They are used minimally and add the classic Bjork electronic sheen to this otherwise amazingly organic piece of music.

This album comes highly recommended — more info at bjork.com.