Biophilia
One Little Indian
****
It's a level of po-faced pretentiousness that would be tolerated from few other artists. Over the course of several months, the eccentric Icelandic singer Björk drip-fed the world with details about Biophilia. It was not just her eighth studio album, we learnt, but a giant multimedia project, including a residency at the Manchester International Festival this summer, a series of interactive iPad apps and even musical workshops to take place around the world.
But the all-encompassing nature of the work wasn't even the most ambitious thing about it. The music of Biophilia is Björk's ardent attempt to understand the rhythms of the universe and the natural world. On the album's sleeve, she is pictured cradling a hefty lump of orange crystal, surrounded by constellations, and smiling calmly as though she has become Mother Nature herself. Live performances have seen the singer take the stage to a voice-over by none other than Richard Attenborough. Special instruments were even developed, including electricity-emitting Tesla coils of the kind Dr Frankenstein might employ, and giant swinging pendulums translating the movements of the Earth into music.
It may come as a surprise, then, that the 10 tracks that make up Biophilia are not a great departure from what Björk has created before. In fact, with many a tinkling glasslike sound and hushed vocal, it feels like a companion to her most subtle work, 2001's Vespertine.
But plenty of new ground is broken too, thanks to the involvement of the London-based producers 16bit and the Iranian-born collaborator Leila Arab. The vibrating Tesla coils give Thunderbolt a surprisingly laid-back early electro feel, as the singer declares "my romantic gene is dominant" and a choir of voices swell behind her. The delicate Moon reflects the gravitational effects of the lunar cycle with delicate harp picking, while Mutual Core, about tectonic movement, begins with a rumble and grows into an earthquake.
The closest thing to a belting lead single is Crystalline, its clinking melody and gorgeous verses at first evoke Vespertine, but soon the waves of beats that punctuated 1990s hits such as Joya wash over the song. That's nothing compared with its final minute,however; as the fragile tune gives way to a shower of Aphex Twin-style acid beats.
On Virus, she first appears to be singing about devotion and interconnectedness between lovers, but it's soon made clear that the story is being told from the perspective of a parasite: "The perfect match, you and me / I adapt, contagious / You open up, say welcome". While Björk's aim of making science and the natural world accessible through song is admirable, many of the lyrics lack the subtlety and ambiguity that fans will have come to expect.
Most of Björk albums feature at least one song on which the artist's passion for experimentation results in something wholly inaccessible. Here it's the droning Dark Matter, which features vocal harmonies that were surely devised to make the listener wince. But as usual, the interlude is more than forgivable when surrounded by so many other breathtaking and brilliant ideas.
With her boldest project to date, Björk has grabbed the world's attention again, in a way that only she can. The sounds of Biophilia may not live up to the ambitiousness of the concept, but that doesn't prevent it from being her finest work in a decade.