Bjork: Medulla

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Herald rating: * * * *

It felt like one that needed to be approached with caution.

After all, this was where Bjork had reportedly done away with instruments and done an album of multitracked vocals, complete with guest turns from a couple of equally esoteric guests - Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas), Robert Wyatt (veteran English music maverick), Rahzel (the Roots' human sampler and vocal beatbox), and Tanya Taqwa (Inuit throat-singer) among others.

From the sound of it, this was going to be the album where Bjork and her otherworldly voice were finally going to leave planet pop and disappear into a higher orbit, never again to trouble us with a catchy tune or a foot-tapping beat.

It does have moments where it can cause family pets to look at the stereo in alarm while a domestic argument rages about whether the right word is "discordant' or "dissonant" (there was no winner).

Among those tracks are the politely named Piano II which sounds like Erik Satie suffering a spectacular, possibly fatal, if rhythmic asthma attack.

Likewise the heavy-breathing, ecstatic-sighing of opener Pleasure is All Mine probably puts it out of contention as the slightly groovy dinner party pop her early albums became.

But even with the I-am-artist-hear-me-wail attitude to it all, this can't help but being not as torturous as all that.

Much of it is strangely spellbinding, even by Bjork's past standards of turning her peculiar phrasing into a melody that no-one else should probably attempt.

It's also hardly the stark a cappella and beat-free exercise it might have been - the surging Where is the Line With You kicks much in the same way as her earlier big-bass hit Army of Me, complete with a menacing choir you wouldn't want to meet in a Reykjavik back alley and some incongruously happy whistling.

Likewise, Who Is It is one that remains grounded in pop song structure with undulating beats and anthemic chorus that bursts forth like a firework, just as her best potential singles always have.

But throughout there are songs that swerve towards the hymnal ( the lovely sung-in-Icelandic Vokuro), ballads of weird but elegant melancholy (Desired Constellation) and duets which redefine the idea of vocal get-togethers (especially the one with Wyatt on Submarine and Rahzel beatboxing on the closing Triumph of the Heart).

It's the strangest thing she's done and it's certainly not the Bjork album that you don't have to like Bjork to like.

But it's sonically entrancing, care of its esoteric production (best heard on headphones so as to not disturb the pets), and its sense of sheer musical possibility.

One might have thought Bjork had pretty much explored the outer limits of her remarkable voice.

Medulla proves one wrong, in a very good way.

Label: Polydor