Content area
Full Text
BJORK - Homogenic (Mother/43:37/ID): Electronica, the new music of the moment, may offer some immediate celestial excitations in its various permutations - trip-hop, rave and ambient. But its pleasures, which are largely centred on the pulse, often seem fleeting.
It's only in the hands of astute melody-conscious singer-songwriters that the form has any hope of gaining a longer shelf life.
Bjork Gudmundsdottir, the Icelandic diva who has made glorious art from using electronic resources on three previous solo outings (Debut, Post and the remix album Telegram), again proves that, when it comes to mixing and matching styles and sounds, there are few to rival her.
The beauty of Bjork's music lies not so much in its breathless eclecticism as in its absorbing emotional power. She may shape a song from a beat of pure white noise, but she knows how to endow it with the right measure of feeling and melodic grace to make it truly matter.
It's this ability to make synthesizer-generated arrangements breathe that makes Homogenic a wondrous chest of joys. Using her own personal quest for placidity and emotional fulfilment, Bjork paints stirring and stimulating sonic pictures with pieces like Hunter, Bachelorette, 5 Years, Immature and All Is Full Of Love.
Traditional orchestrations, techno beats and shifting idioms are seamlessly married in a shimmering mix of tonal spice and textural suggestion.
The songs may take a while to get into, and a couple of tracks, like the Eumir Deodato-arranged disco driver Pluto, may have a cheesy air. But Homogenic never leaves you dissatisfied.
(Distributed by PolyGram)
Performance: * * * *
Sound: * * * *
* GREEN DAY - Nimrod (Reprise/49:08/LPD): Probably the most interesting of the punk-fed hard rock bands, Green Day has sustained itself purely on the propulsive energy of the Ramones-perfected short, sharp and spiky power- pop format.
There's more of that on this new...