What the hell is Biophilia ? If Björk, Iceland’s resident alien siren-poet, has any say, it’s most certainly more than just her eighth studio album. Recorded partially on an iPad, designed to accompany a series of spacey visual apps, written largely with instruments she invented (including a "gameleste," some sort of Earth-movement pendulum harp), Biophilia has been the subject of so much viral marketing and non-musical hoo-hah that it’s tough to remember that this is actually, you know, a collection of songs. For all its experimentation, Biophilia sounds like another Björk album — not a major reinvention or cataclysmic overhaul. This means a number of things. Most important, there’s still that voice. No matter whether she’s doing quirky show tunes, experimental a cappella, or blaring trip-hop, her acquired-taste of a croon has always run on one mode — jagged, fractured melodies dancing awkwardly like a drunk half-remembering a line-dance, her precious phrasing coated in ecstatic spurts and stammers. Much of the album is moody, slow, and occasionally (as on the brooding "Mutual Core"), tedious. It’s a grower — don’t go in without some time to invest, or the desire to listen multiple times and peel apart these lavishly constructed layers. "Moon" is a gorgeous view from an aimlessly drifting space capsule : all soothing harp, acoustic finger-plucking, and pulsing electro-bass. "Cosmogony" opens with a torrent of voices ascending skyward, racing toward a plateau of gurgling bass and warped brass. "They say back then, our universe was a cold, black egg until the God inside burst out," Björk sings. And there’s something oddly comforting about the frosty, glitchy beats and dubby bass of "Crystalline." When an ear-rupturing avalanche of programmed beats explodes toward the track’s conclusion, it feels like Pangea dramatically splitting at the seams — or, maybe, the universe erupting from its cold, black egg.
The boston Phoenix
Articles de la même année
2011
date
publication
titre
18.03.2011
guardian.co.uk
26.07.2011
Evolver.fm
27.07.2011
Evolver.fm
06.10.2011
Now Magazine
07.10.2011
artinfo.com
10.10.2011
Popsop.com
18.10.2011
The Guardian
11.11.2011
StreetDate.Radio.com
14.11.2011
mi2n.com