Björk Guðmundsdóttir. The futuristic eskimo. The world’s favourite conceptual elf. She’s the mother of reinvention. She’s Iceland’s third biggest export behind Kerry Katona’s dwindling showbiz career and local delicacy singed sheep heads. One time she dressed up like a swan.
As you may have guessed, Reykjavík’s favourite art house pixie has never been my cup of tea, but with any new release comes an opportunity for change and I recalled there was a lot of buzz about her playing at Bestival. Unfortunately, even though I knew I’d be reviewing this album, I missed her live performance in lieu of an impromptu wrestling match with my flatmate amidst a thousand techno revellers. You can’t win them all.
I set about listening with an open mind but was ultimately disappointed with this LP. Credit where it’s due, lead single ‘Crystalline’ is sharply produced and features 52 seconds of pure joy in the form of an absurd jungle rinse out produced by 16Bit. Penultimate track ‘Mutual Core’ is, for all intents and purposes, absolute filth. It’s Noisia-themed poundings beat the sense out of the melancholy that precedes it and it sounds glorious.
But the remaining efforts and their decidedly over-complicated themes fall very far from the tree. Convoluted recording methods and sporadic time signatures paradoxically make the tracks feel empty. The sparse, sombre tone that litters 90% of the album makes it feel incomplete and leaves you begging for substance as opposed to the conceptualism it offers.
Imagine my bamboozlement to find that the internet is all over it like a cheap suit. Reviewers are throwing 9s at it left, right and starboard, arguing that it’s somehow ‘redefined the relationship between technology and nature’. People are going ape for the way this album has been released. Through a corporate tie-in with Apple it exists as a series of apps. Each track is narrated and annotated and entirely context bound. The CD isn’t the full experience; you have to buy the apps as well. Critics are claiming this will revolutionise the way music is distributed and in turn change the music industry completely.
If change means allowing artists to compromise the integrity of their musical output under the guise of it being a small piece of a larger whole, then yes, it will change the industry completely; it’ll change it into Hollywood. And let me tell you, the day I buy into an Icelandic George Lucas is the day I stop my inappropriate festival wrestling ways. Never.
