Wednesday, January 27, 2010

6. Vespertine - Bjork (2001)


(Taken from the SCQ Review:)

After invigorating dance music and electro-pop throughout the 90s and finishing the decade with the seminal Homogenic, Bjork looked inward. The digital mash of loops and beats that signified both Post and Homogenic were inspired by her five year relationship with DJ-artist Goldie; the former a testament to head-over-heels love, the latter a post-breakup onslaught. With her personal strife healed and behind her, Bjork began composing more minimal song structures that incorporated more ambient and electronic influences. Both genres are generously treated on the near X-rated ‘Cocoon’ and haunted whirls of ‘An Echo, A Stain’, while Bjork’s impressive beat-programming gives an organic pulse to album highlight ‘It’s Not Up To You’. Although equally dense in arrangements and diverse instrumentally, Vespertine is Bjork at her most pensive and intimate; her voice largely reduced to coos and echoes, her beats spliced into fluttered snowflakes, and lyrics that uncover her most private moments.

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