Bjork - Biophilia (CD, Double vinyl LP)

Bjork is back after a three year hiatus with a brand new project. She doesn't do albums anymore... they're projects. This project just happens to be a new album which is released on vinyl CD and IOS app. For the less nerdy of you that's a piece of software for an iDevice (iPhone, iPad) and having tinkered with the ipad app of Biophilia I can confirm it's a lot of fun. A lot of effort has gone into it creating a unique visual and audio experience utilising Apple's hardware. Still we're not selling that so there's no fucking point harping on about it. This is a multimedia exploration of where nature, technology and music meet. Bjork has very kindly decided to take on life, the universe and everything and wrap it up into a ten track album (with three bonus tracks on the deluxe CD version). Musically it's more like Vespertine that Volta. Sure it's got some of the technological splurge you found in Volta but it's a way more coherent record. In some ways it's quite a difficult record though as the songs aren't massively catchy. There's no immediate pop singles on here that I can hear. Crystalline is the closest thing to a catchy pop single on the album. There's deep orchestral moments, plenty of twinkles, massive choirs, lots of organs as well as Bjork's unique vocals. It's quite soundtracky and listening to this for the first time it sounds like it should belong to a film. It's essentially an experimental album with more downbeat moments than upbeat ones. It's definitely one of the more interesting Bjork albums but if you're after catchy pop hits then I'd look elsewhere.