Björk - Homogenic POLL

xp

Actually, the match that I don't think she'll ever be able to top is her collaborations with Eumir Deodato, which imo almost always led to transcendent results. He arranged all those impossibly gorgeous & lush string arrangements everyone loves in Post & Homogenic.

― Turangalila

If I'm right he didn't have anything to do with Post. He only collaborated producing and creating arrangements for Homogenic and closest thing he did collaborating for Post is the magnificent Isobel mix for Telegram... stands as the definite version of the song for me.

You're wrong, though. Check again. He wrote all the string arrangements for Post.

that's why the Isobel mix is called the Deodato mix, btw, because the only thing on it is his strings

also John Altman helped create orchestral arrangements of things Eumir wrote.

i'm not getting the "alarm call" love

I think people are giving it unfair love because of the amazing Rhythmic Phonetics mix (DD stand up.)

Anyway: Jóga. Those are Mark Bell beats, right? They are perfect for this song. Everything in this song is perfect for it.

Alarm Call is worthy of all the love. it's a terrific, far-reaching pop song, and it's mixed well.

It's also grating major key drivel and ruins the flow of an otherwise perfect album.

the album would b too heavy without it -- in my mind, "drivel" is just another word for "light," or "untethered."

It's not the only song in a major key, either.

Joga is in a major key too but it's gorgeous. :)

of course, that isn't to say that i would ever choose Alarm Call. and i agree that it's somewhat removed from the point of the album.

"All is Full of Love" is pretty much major too, I think.

i wish some of the other songs on this had a little more of the softness in All is Full of Love. just a little more to break up the homogeneity of the production.

Nah, it's just over 40 minutes. One of those goes a long way.

(Plus, "Unravel" and "Immature")

well, i meant softness in terms of texture as opposed to composition, but i see what you're saying.

Not dismissing entire tonalities, obv. Just find Alarm Call does sound cloying in that way which only forced "joyful" music makes me feel. None of the other major key songs in this album sound this way; they're perfectly balanced.

There definitely is something about it that seems to throw a lot of people off. I've heard a lot of people say they skip it. I always chalked it up to having a latent trip-hop vibe.

Yes, and I can hear that. It's not the production that bothers me, it's the vocal melody tbh.

i can see how it could sound a little pre-packaged in its joy -- point taken on that front. but it did always make me happy, genuinely.

As I said before, I got the radio mix on my iPod, not the album version.

"alarm call" is basically just björk tossing off a michael jackson pastiche though, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but its funk-lite bassline and hip-hop beats are really out of place on an album which is otherwise about ~epic strings~ and *crunching industrial beats* - plus i think she sort of makes a mess out of a perfectly good song by trying to make it too off-kilter and björky rather than a straight-up pastiche - everything in it sits together rather oddly.

i've never heard any of its remixes though! i should.

also, i def remember reading somewhere that it was to be originally titled "jacko" - no idea if this is true though

lex otm

i don't think being out of place is necessarily a bad thing, tho

tho the more i think about Alarm Call now, the less i want to listen to it, i do think it got a lot of people's attention who wouldn't normally have listened to bjork (i can attest to this based on a few friends)

her phrasing on "joga," it's like she's discovering language. amazing song.

don't they say she recorded this in the mountains?

like actually in the fields

Thought it was a mic cord all the way out to the ocean, but that might've been Post.

I'm kind of baffled by people out-and-out dismissing "Alarm Call".

I like Alarm Call but it doesn't quite fit here, it feels like a throwback to the first couple of hours.

I love the opening seconds of both Hunter and Joga but there's nothing here that quite measures up to the swept-off-your-feet-fucking-hell-we're-FLYING feeling of Batchelorette.

Since you mention it, I think I'm also in the minority that loves the ambient album version of "Love" waaaaaaay more than any of the remixes.

Nope, I'm with you. This was my vote, I love all these songs but "Love" just towers above her entire catalog.

Tough call between Joga, Bachelorette and All is Full of Love, but I went for the third one. It's as close to a song capturing a pure emotion as I can think of - spectacular. Strangely I didn't like it that much until I heard the video version of "Love", which helped me understand the structure.

i forgot how much i like 5 years!!

That song sort of describes the exact way I handle relationships.

I mean it describres it backwards... mhmm it's like Bjork is singing it to me... in my mind '5 years' and 'Hounds of Love' by Kate Bush are call and response songs. I sing out 'hounds of love' and then Bjork comes out calling me a coward, telling me I can't handle love... which is pretty much true.

xxp
yeah, surm, 5 years has grown on me a lot over the years.

it's very listenable, and touching without being too much

5 Years was my first favorite on this album, but then it moved to Alarm Call and I'm never looking back.

I Love 'Unravel', it's simple and beautiful and great songwriting and a fantastic vocal again. It's a tune I'd really like to cover, were I a musician.

the lyrics are also perfect on that one

The vocals in this album are her most forceful and beautiful, imo. As someone else pointed out, her phrasing here is consistently strange and lovely.

Very hard to choose, but "Unravel" for me too, mostly for personal, sentimental reasons: the best song for a long-distance relationship ever?

The lyrics to "Unravel" seem, to me, a loose adaptation of Breaking the Waves.

The lyrics to "Pluto" seem, to me, an example of prophecy inveighing against the hypocrisy of our times.

lol

All complaints directed against "Alarm Call" are coming from crusty but benign managing editors at defunct alt zines.

and lady cops.

We're up to our ears in this thread.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

What the fuck is she singing after 'your doors are shut"? no lyrics sites have that listed and I can't understand it; maybe it's in icelandic

(on 'all if full of love')