POLL Neon Like -- ILM artist poll #88 -- BJÖRK (voting open until April 27, 2018)

Volta is very much her Varèse album, isn't it? The larger instrumental ensembles are back but I'd forgotten that it's nearly all brass and percussion. Saving the strings for Vulnicura, it turns out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnRhxOx_Cw4

holy shit

dope brad

i think you can make a case for "it's oh so quiet" being a gateway bjork track for the ardent and casual fan alike, i remember working at a&b sound and people would buy Post with like red hot chili peppers, not to judge that band but i'm saying it appealed to everyone

it was the first bjork I heard. I remember my teacher in junior school one day getting all excited "did you guys see buh-jork on top of the pops last night?!"

I definitely heard/saw Bjork via some of the Debut videos first, but "It's Oh So Quiet" was the first thing by her that I remember enjoying. I'm in the process of watching all of the official music videos available on her YouTube channel, and I can't imagine anything topping this for sheer exuberant joy (though "Big Time Sensuality" comes close).

Stonemilker is really incredible, I think it's going to make my top 10

30 tracks was impossible. I'll send 30. . . but personally, I didn't fall to anything I don't like more than 99.9% of contemporary/contemporaneous music until well after #50. And if I did it again at another time, anything between 20 and 40 would probably wind up in a different order.

Reinforced what I already thought, which is that 'Medulla' is basically right there with 'Post'. In terms of tracks, I actually ended up with 11 from 'Medulla' in my top 50. I wish others heard in it what I do--her last great stab at song/melody/beats before focusing mainly on texture/abstraction/instrumentation. But I am already prepared for the likelihood that at best one or two tracks will sneak into the bottom of the ILM top 30.

The thing I hadn't realized before this exercise is that while 'Vespertine' hasn't held up for me over the years like other albums, the b-sides from that era are maybe her best--I've got as many b-sides as album tracks from 'Vespertine'.

For post-Medulla work, sadly, 'Volta' remains as repellent to me as ever--while I dig some of the thought process and the instrumentation, I just find the whole thing disjointed, and while "song-based" totally unengaging as songs and as a song-sequence. 'Biophilia' remains the lovely little trifle I remember it as, not at all unappealing but basically minor. 'Vulnicura' is stronger as a whole than anything since 'Medulla' (and is the only later album to place multiple tracks in my top 30) but it's still most interesting as a sort of "older person looking back and arguing with her early art" than as a work unto itself, for me--while nevertheless being her first emotionally engaging work in a long time. I found a couple tracks from 'Utopia' that manage to actually stand apart enough to be noticed, but the sum total of the album remains fascinating wallpaper.

I didn't fall to anything I don't like more than 99.9% of contemporary/contemporaneous music until well after #50.

Same.

"older person looking back and arguing with her early art" ... while nevertheless being her first emotionally engaging work in a long time.

OTM. Especially glad to have revisited Vulnicura this week.

It's so incredibly early yet in balloting, but for the record, the current #2 track is an amazing surprise.

My guess is Who Is It but that’s such a perfect song

jesus christ the vespertine b-sides

"generous palmstroke" AND "verandi"

so I've warmed to Medulla.

I liked it at the time, and sold it during the great CD purge of 2015. Kind of regretting that now, or at least I very well might be once I give it a fresh listen.

"domestica" AND "amphibian," this is ridiculous

Brad! "Generous Palmstroke" is purest Nelsonlania.

Fans of Medulla might enjoy this one:

https://youtu.be/NDVMtnaB28E

Won the pulitzer prize. Some parts of it are really impressive.

^ Thanks for posting. Björk herself is a huge fan, she's mentioned Shaw in interviews and I think even put "Partita" on one of her DJ mixes.

That's really great Moka.

my ballot is shaping up to be so bjork normcore :-/

i am trawling her post-vespertine work, and several will definitely make my list...but probably near the bottom. it's really difficult to pierce the top-tier of debut-vespertine tracks, at least for me. i have a hard time putting anything above even my current 3rd or 4th favorite track off of homogenic or post.

post-vespertine work
er, by this i mean her work after vespertine

the top-tier of debut-vespertine tracks
and by that i meant tracks spanning from debut through vespertine

I hear you but.. there's nothing actually wrong with that route?

my ballot is v weird so far but i'm not sure i'm going to have room for anything after medulla myself

one album i'm surprisingly short on is selmasongs. that was my bjork JAM back in the day, i guess just because my car only had a tape deck and selmasongs was on one side, the bends was on the other. so i listened to it roughly a million times. but revisiting it after all this time, i only have "i've seen it all" on my ballot (near the bottom, probably). "new world" used to be so triumphant sounding and amazing to me...i don't know why, but it doesn't inspire the same feeling in me anymore. perhaps because i'm no longer 17 years old

I hear you but.. there's nothing actually wrong with that route?

for sure! i guess i was just hoping to find some gems i had neglected, some new top-tier favorite bjork song that i hadn't given enough time to before. i still haven't made it back to vulnicura in my re-listen binge, so there's still hope though. :)

yeah my ballot's at 25 songs rn and that's without having figured out where the big singles from homogenic sit in it. after that i may be done lol

xxp

new top-tier favorite bjork song that i hadn't given enough time to before

i found these, but they were b-sides: "karvel," "domestica," etc.

yes! "charlene" and "i go humble" fit into that category for me too!

I surprised myself by finding room for a track from every studio album (minus the 1977 one)

that's my ambition

I don't have anything on my list from Volta or Utopia at the moment.

My biggest discovery from listening back to her albums over the last week has been how much I love Medulla. I've always liked it, but it's really hit me this week. Three songs from it will probably make my list at this point.

i listened to medulla this morning and it fuckin rocks! even the most abstract vocal clusters are sold by the songcraft

My other big discovery doing this process is that there is not a song on Vespertine called Crabcraft. When I sent my rough draft to my brother (who also posts on here) he said he'd never heard of a song with that title by her. After he looked it up, turns out that song is actually called Heirloom and Crabcraft is the song she sampled for it. Apparently when I imported all my CDs on to iTunes 11 years ago, that's what the song came up as. I do have the album on vinyl but I'm so used to seeing it on iTunes as that, I thought that was the title. Looking at Lastfm it looks like that happened to a lot of people.

underrated instrumental jam from Drawing Restraint #9: Ambergris March

i'm not voting for it but speaking of underrated instrumental jams, how unreal is "batabid"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_drj3ybpTl8

on second thought maybe i am voting for it

love it when a youtube comment nails it:

quinn thereaux
2 months ago
water level music

so correct

(btw just want to add that i'm really loving this bjork binge for this poll. it's been a while since i've listened to her 4+ hours a day, and her music has helped make a very stressful week so much better than it would be otherwise)

same here. björk is so good and i’m sorry i forgot

i think her work deserves some kind of comprehensive bowiesongs-esque blog

the later bjork albums (like the last two) don't have as many hits per ratio as the earlier ones do, but the peaks are fairly high - tabula rasa (utopia) and stonemilker are up there with his best work,

her * my god

i'm halfway done my top 30!

i managed to cut 100+ songs to 65!

and i still havent cut a single song off of homogenic this is hard

same here. björk is so good and i’m sorry i forgot

i'm right here with both of you. this poll reminded me that she's probably--no, not probably, definitely--top 5 all time for me.

She’s up there with peej for me

one album i'm surprisingly short on is selmasongs. that was my bjork JAM back in the day, i guess just because my car only had a tape deck and selmasongs was on one side, the bends was on the other. so i listened to it roughly a million times. but revisiting it after all this time, i only have "i've seen it all" on my ballot (near the bottom, probably). "new world" used to be so triumphant sounding and amazing to me...i don't know why, but it doesn't inspire the same feeling in me anymore. perhaps because i'm no longer 17 years old

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, April 17, 2018 6:22 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Scatterheart was always my favourite from Selmasongs so I'm hoping I can make room for that on my ballot. As it stands I've got at least one track from each of the studio albums and am seriously considering including Storm from Drawing Restraint 9, that song is really something.

I don't have anything on my list from Volta or Utopia at the moment.

My ballot is 98 percent finalized and somehow has two songs from Utopia on it.

It might not make my ballot, but one song I find really interesting to think about is "Sweet Intuition", in that it makes me imagine a kind of alternate history where her music went down a different path.

For all that Bjork's music grew progressively more abstract over the course of her career, there's actually a trend away from what in my head I'm calling "compression" - like, listen to Homogenic and "Pluto" aside while there are obviously beats there's not much in the way of loops - typically the melodies are these shimmering (frequently string-based) expanses which the beats then underpin (or trample over). And that kind of remains her approach thereafter though if/when I listen to Volta again there might be some exceptions to that.

"Sweet Intuition" meanwhile is all these compressed fidgety interlocking synth loops creating asymmetric rhythms (no surprises it's a Black Dog production), out of which Bjork tries to make a song.

It's much more of an obvious b-side than "Charlene" or "I Go Humble" or "Karvel", but if we all went back to 1995 and you asked me "which of Bjork's most recent tracks sounds like the beginning of her next chapter" I might put forward this track and say "Bjork's next album should be like the abstract far side of Insides' Euphoria."