Have you heard?: Björk - Medúlla

To the average passer-by, Björk is known for bringing the elfin folklore of Iceland into the wider world, for wearing the infamous swan dress to the Oscars, and for that distinctive voice. The typical fan recognises her more for the impressive lineage of varied and unique albums, which arguably peaked with 2004’s Medúlla.

Like any great artist, Björk’s works are broadly influenced by the experience of life and others’ art, and it was her experience as a child star in Iceland which instigated her own unique creative path. After her eponymous debut album – a collection of folk songs and frankly ill-advised Icelandic-translated covers of songs including ‘The Fool on the Hill’ – was recorded under duress at the age of 11, she vowed never to be a mere jukebox again.

Particularly self-aware and loving of animal nature (her pagan spirit is well documented), Björk’s subsequent years at music school were crucial in the formation of her untameable talent. After spending rebellious years in a succession of bands (notably KUKL and The Sugarcubes), her faithfulness to true expression of her situation became the central theme of her work; that her albums come only as frequently as her worldview changes contributes in no small part to the continued interest of her music.

Debut represented her tentative first steps onto the solo music scene, before Post and Homogenic moved towards bigger beats and extroversion as her life took her into vibrant new scenes. Approaching motherhood for the second time, Vespertine saw an introspective Björk engaging with micro-beats in collaboration with Matmos, the New York-based electronic duo famed for their use of unusual instruments (the squelches of surgical procedures, the amplified sound of hair being cut, and on one occasion the reproductive organs of a cow).

Björk’s next major project, Medúlla, might initially seem to betray the clear progression of her previous albums. Rather than clearly depicting the sounds of domestic life with a child (how that album would sound we can only – perhaps with some trepidation – imagine), it sprang from a moment of abstraction from her actual situation: she noted the feeling of looking through “some kind of time tunnel to when I was 17, 18 years old.” Looking through the portal, back to her time in KUKL, Björk was suddenly inclined to bring focus back round from cow parts and electronics to the most primal element of her music: the voice.

Whilst the album's lyrical themes are notable, touching on family, creative inspiration and breast-feeding, its most dominant unifying feature is the saturated use of the voice. Almost every tone and every beat is vocally produced, either directly or through electronic modification; Björk and a team of collaborators including Inuit throat singers, two choirs, free-jazz legend Robert Wyatt and renowned human beat-boxers Rahzel, Dokaka and Shlomo build up extremes of textures in inventive forms.

A look at just a few tracks displays the variety on offer: ‘Where is the Line’ is raucous, based on intrusive, pounding bass lines and choral harmonies, before the almost hymnic ‘Vökuró’ (Icelandic for vigil) reverts to a relatively traditional choral setting. Later, ‘Mouths Cradle’ plays with electronic manipulation to be built on a looped foundation. Demonstrating the power and diversity of the human vocal range, the fundamentally similar resources used create a great assortment of musical moods across the album’s 14 tracks.

On its release, Medúlla became Björk’s highest entry in the US album charts (at #14), whilst ‘Oceania’ was chosen for a special performance at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, yet still it gets treated as more of an oddity in the Björk canon. For its fascinating breadth of vision, though, it deserves as close a listen as any of her work.

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