It was a shock to hear Björk performing in Athens at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games earlier this month, for such events are customarily reserved for the blandest, safest and most uniformly mainstream manifestations of popular music. Oceania, the uncompromising track that she previewed from Medulla, her seventh solo album, made no concessions to the tastes of the mass audience for which she was singing.

Indeed, Medulla may be the most strikingly unconventional album that Björk has yet made. Gone are the dense soundscapes of chaotic beats, strings, brass and electronic noises with which she has filled past releases. In their place comes an album that is mostly a cappella, stripped down to make her voice the central instrument. Not that stripped-down is quite the right description, for Björk’s singing is layered, looped and multitracked to create a cutting-edge wall of vocal sound that is at times quite monumental.

On Vokuro she is accompanied by a 20-piece choir, while elsewhere we hear the voices of the traditional Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis and the Japanese singer Dokaka. But it is Björk’s own signature sound that commands total attention, with some of the most extreme, experimental and breathtakingly beautiful singing I have heard. A landmark record, even by her own extraordinary standards.

(One Little Indian)

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