Description

Björk – Medúlla

Björk’s 6th full-length studio album, released in 2004.

“Almost entirely a cappella, and recorded with choirs from Iceland and London, a throat singer and a human beat-box (Rahzel from the Roots), Medulla has little precedent in popular music. There is, though, an esoteric lineage to be traced back, from Kate Bush’s work with the Trio Bulgarka to Donald Byrd’s collaborations with arranger Coleridge Perkinson, and the more extreme choral pop and jazz records of the 1950s where sweetness and dissonance become inseparable.

Björk’s earlier records were as uneven as the push and pull of the life they reflected; since Vespertine, however, and her relationship with artist Matthew Barney, she has hit a wonderstruck seam of rapture. “Every pearl is a lynx is a girl,” she sings in Oceania, choral swoops exploding like fireworks behind her, “sweet like harmony made into flesh.”

Medúlla is playful and hymnal, sometimes surprisingly violent, often sombre but always full of awe. It’s fitting that Robert Wyatt, who also seems to float above conventional ideas about music, should lend to it his fragile coo. Medúlla may divide Björk’s audience, but, combining intellectual rigour and sensual ravishment, it is brave and unique.” – The Guardian

Tracklist:
1. Pleasure Is All Mine
2. Show Me Forgiveness
3. Where Is The Line
4. Vökuró
5. Öll Birtan
6. Who Is It (Carry My Joy On The Left Carry My Pain On The Right)
7. Submarine
8. Desired Constellation
9. Oceania
10. Sonnets / Unrealities XI
11. Ancestors
12. Mouth’s Cradle
13. Miðvikudags
14. Triumph Of A Heart