Album of the Day: Björk - Homogenic

Björk - Homogenic (1997)

alternative dance, art pop, progressive pop, trip-hop

Following the release of Post (1995), Björk had undergone numerous obstacles that she never had before in terms of her love life, music, and near murder. Sticking with her single word naming conventions, Homogenic (originally titled Homogeneous) is a testament to the poetry of her intuition that this creative watermark so beautifully corresponded with the most turbulent time in her life. Björk’s creative rebirth invited her to re-evaluate the way she had handled herself in the wake of such fame. For someone who had spent the past four years continually undone by travel and tour, concepts of home and belonging resonated strongly to her. Thus, the record is all about her embracing her homeland and reclamation of self as home.

Harnessing artistic bravery and strength, not only did Björk charge with full force in unusual sonic textures, but she wrote and co-programmed it entirely by herself. In addition, she collaborated with a few friends and idols including Dravs, Howie Bernstein, Guy Sigworth, and LFO’s Mark Bell to help her create the exact sounds that brewed in her head. Björk, therefore, gathered all her outrageous concepts and molded those ideas to create sonically captivating paint-on-canvas-like music. As a result, Homogenic consists of a strange but effective mixture of hard electronic beats and string octet performances embracing the beautiful glimmer of ice and rock. As for vocals, Björk stepped up extremely far, screaming out pain in such songs like Pluto and reminiscing tranquility in such songs like Unravel. From dramatic shell shock, Björk returns with a flaming album of fierce poetic expression. Let's delve into the songs more.

The paranoid snares and aching violins work in excellent and darkly contrast with Björk's haunting vocals opens Homogenic in the song Hunter, which explains the omnipresent fear of abandonment. Following Hunter’s chaos is the poignantly gorgeous tune, Joga, which is a track of gratitude for her friend Joga. The song’s beats were unbelievably constructed and manipulated from Icelandic volcanic bubble sounds adjacent to patriotically played strings. Rising and falling to the actual sounds of Iceland's volcanoes, the lyrics explain how love and hate as parallels disappear with greater love. Unravel is one of the most heartbreaking songs of Björk's career, accentuating her misfortune in a gentle yet brooding atmosphere within the pit of a gently thumping heart and blood coursing through the veins. Here, Björk effortlessly combines hope and disaster majestically. Additionally, the lyrically metaphoric song of Bachelorette surrounds listeners in gorgeously haunting violins, chaotically toxic beats, and powerfully painful vocals. The thickly textured tune describes a woman who personifies herself as this loving passive object, while the man she loves is an active animal (or person who comes and goes as he will). The crunchy distorted tune, 5 Years, is Björk’s frustration for a guy—who is acting as if afraid of love—to be straight up with her. Similar to Joga, 5 Years is constructed by manipulated earthquakes, dancing with a Nintendo-like synthesizer tucked away behind the punches and pounds of the beats, and the always brilliant harmonious strings. Trance styled, Immature takes the listener to a less aleatoric surrounding, showing how lyrical repetition is highly effective without any tedium. The rhythmic beats with Björk’s emotional vocals turn infectious within seconds. The track begins with stunningly eerie Björk humming to her own tune, before she scolds herself for being immature, and questioning her actions. Alas, the album ends a massive duo of songs encompassing a contrast sonically and similar brilliancy. Pluto is the most hardcore and audacious songs in Björk history. Consisting of extreme, outrage of shrieks, it is a song of Mars, but radiantly composed. About ending rebirth; shedding your skin on purpose, Pluto is undoubtedly conjured up from a great deal of aggravation. In complete contrast, Pluto follows up with the album closer, All is Full of Love. The tune is none other than pure driving and uplifting beauty. Beginning with an almost electrical serge sound and the gradual enter of cold crisp strings, All is Full of Love is stripped from beats from the aforementioned songs and left with shimmers of enigmatic tones. The rain comes crashing down on all physical matter in its molecular density containing seeds of love. Björk then enters with an umbrella in the dead of night staring at the starry sky and lamenting for one last time. I am in awe by this album, I really am. Not only did Björk show her most inner deepest and darkest soul, she created an unforgettable world to mourn in.

Homogenic is unquestionably a tour-de-force. Riveting form start to finish, the album overflows with brilliant and intellectually structured songs: creative sounds and one of the greatest voices of modern electronic music. Every track is indispensable, genuine, astounding, each flowing to the next perfectly like blood streams. This is the record that characterizes Björk completely: eccentric, emotional, childlike, reflective, distinctive, and forevermore changing. Within Homogenic, Björk manages to present herself fearlessly. As a result, the album displays exterior textures of robustness and intensity, and interior textures of warmth and emotion.

The Musical Photoshop

Quoted once by Pablo Picasso, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." To me, this proverb is complex, but primarily illustrates the evident difference between aping and assimilating; copying and internalizing; being unoriginal and innovative. For better of for worse, every artist of every kind builds on what was done by his or her predecessors. It's only when these craftsmen take things to new heights, in new directions, when we see greatness emerge.

In music specifically, sampling is the act of extracting a portion of sound recording and reusing/remodeling it into another tune; sometimes for laziness, other times creativity and respect. The widespread use of this technique originated with the birth of dance, hip-hop and industrial music in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Why sample, you ask? It's more for the craft of bringing sounds, ideas and emotions together like a scrapbook or musical journal. From then, it has progressed into more songs and more genres than ever before. Despite harsher clearing/copyright laws today, sampling, when executed aesthetically well, is an integral part of modern music.

Back in the discotheque era, DJs continued to experiment with sampling in quite facile and basic manners. Repeating electronically generated lines (ie 303 baselines), to studio recordings or samples of live electric bassists, or simply filtered-down samples from classic funk recordings, made such DJs like DJ Francis a musical manipulator guru. Throughout the 80s and 90s, electronic music increased its sample library with sounds from jazz, blues, funk, soul and synth pop. The sole purpose of these samples were often to add the foundation of the drum beat and synth bass line. House music, more specifically, may also include disco and gospel vocals. These fusions made up the musical symbolic representation of freedom, diversity and love. It wasn't until dance music emerged in Britain when rap was sampled, evolving the use of sampling yet again.

Moving along in hip-hop terms, sampling is defined by something a lot more progressive, dynamic and clever. In this genre, sampling started out as splicing out or copying parts from other songs and rearranging or reworking these into a cohesive musical pattern, or better known as a loop. This was the root and main aspect of any hip-hop tune; it drives the rest of the music onward. The sounds ultimately melt into a single instrument and no longer heterogeneous. In 1986, then-Def Jam producer Rick Rubin used Black Sabbith and Led Zeppelin loops in creating the popular Beastie Boy's debut Licence to Ill. Funk and soul are also revisited here in providing breakbeats, especially from the great James Brown. Sometimes, samples are recognizable and other times they're not. The true craft of sampling in any genre is to convert it into another entity.

Some types of industrial music, or Electronic Body Music (EBM) rely heavily on sample use. Unlike electronic and hip-hop sampling, EBM includes heavy use of sampling, yet an absence of vocal modification.

Forwarding to the 2000s up until today, sampling has colossally evolved: despite greater copyright laws, even greater sample usage is implemented today than ever before. We will first delve into non-mainstream music. Electronic pioneers Herbert, Mum, Matmos and Bjork were the first artists to take found-sound sampling to an entirely new level. Herbert introduced this idea of microbeats; Matthew Herbert essentially recorded privatized, introspective sounds, such as teeth clatter, bees buzzing, and a zipper travelling up its spine into creatively passive beats. This began a creative revolution for electronic music. Mum, however, drove down a different route, meddling with cutlery, toys and static TV sets and manipulating them in IDM-fashion. The result brought on a cute and tastefully cluttered side to IDM music that's still considered unique today.

Artists have also been daring in the sampling business. Venetian Snares, for example, is a breakcore artist who has willingly sampled Dinah Washington, Danny Elfman, Billie Holliday and various film and television dialogue in his tracks. Dubstep artist Synkro has sampled Marvin Gaye, Ne-Yo and Aretha Franklin. Even Amon Tobin didn't go anywhere near sample clearance until recent years. There is a fundamental reason why artists like to play with fire like this. Artists remember a time when a great abstract artist once said "[...] great artists steal." And thus, these artists rebel for a chance of artistic freedom by literally dissecting songs, and that can be a powerful asset to work with. Additionally, as underground and with sparsely distributed releases, these artists are not likely to be discovered and attacked by the mainstream.

Now, the mainstream music industry samples as well, obviously with permission. But how much creative power is there? With the money circulating the mainstream industry, artists and producers alike can lazily and blindly take people's work to give their song a "boost". The first time I heard Beyonce's Who Run the World (Girls) I was absolutely shocked. The song is actually, in fact, Pon De Floor by Diplo's side project, Major Lazer, with Beyonce's vocals subbed over top. By not crediting such a large sample, listeners may misleadingly refer to the song as original. A very similar use is illustrated in Kanye West's Bigger Stronger Faster (Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger). Although the song was more artistically blended, it was still apparent that West used a Daft Punk classic. Is this called abuse? Unethical? Disrespectful? That's up for debate. What is known is that sampling has been saturated in mainstream to the point of losing its mystique.

Despite the fact that sampling is good and bad in different situations, it still shaped a great part of music today. I am personally a sucker for great sampling in any style of music. There is something powerful about someone who can successfully musically Photoshop, especially when the artist is under the radar. With limited wealth and fame, artists tend to be more clever and imaginative in creating infectious loops and jolting vox. Conversely, with wealth, artists enter a place where the egoism shadows creativity.