Björk
Vespertine
»
Björk
Vespertine
Elektra, 2001
RiYL: Sigur Ros, Radiohead, Matmos |
This time around, the alien sounds that make up Björk's music are not as unfamiliar. It is her production techiniques that really take the music to higher elevations. Evident on "Cocoon," Björk's voice lacks the familiar reverberation heard on most of her other songs, it's almost as if she were singing straight into your face. You can hear her take deep sensual breaths in between crooning the intimate lyrics. On "Undo," you can hear several voices panned to the left and right ears, weaving together to create the Björk voice we have become attuned to. And on "Aurora," the main beat of the song sounds like a person walking in snow, while the artist sings a tale of glaciers.
Ever since Debut, Björk has taken advantage of using the studio as an instrument, but never has she been so effective. It's the subtleness in the production that really brings forth the creativity and orignality that we have come to expect from this Icelandic pixie.
Aside from the production, the actual music on Vespertine seems to carry a theatrical quality, possibly taking a cue from last year's Selmasongs. The album even flows like a movie, drawing you into Björk's elegant brand of sounds. Compared to her previous records, Vespertine retains a fairly constant mood rather than genre-hopping. A bulk of the songs are angled toward the familiar love theme, with just a hint of the surreal lyrics that overflowed on her previous works.
"An Echo, A Stain" and the 7-minute album closer "Unison" take advantage of the orchestra and clever drumbeat programming that is spread throughout the album. And because of the warm use of strings, the album has an uplifting quality that raises the emotion meter a notch or two. The music definitely has more open spaces compared to Bjork's tightly structured sophomore album Post, letting the music tell the story along with the words.
Of all the albums released this year, Vespertine is one of the most impressive and cohesive, an album that caused me to occasionally shake my head in astonishment. It's not often that an album can really move you the way Vespertine has the potential to do. The only letdown is that fact that it didn't puzzle or confuse me the way Homogenic did the first time I heard it.
Homogenic was the kind of album that needed aggressive listens to in order to decipher the complex music, whereas Vespertine is the kind of album that lets you passively allow the music to seep into your body. Either way, the music eventually gets through, and Björk is proven a genius, creating the future of music today. If Homogenic was the robot with a brain, then Vespertine is the robot with a heart.
MARVIN LIN |