Rating: NN
Even for Bjork, not a novice at hatching oddball schemes, Medulla is a daring recording experiment. So the story goes, when Bjork felt her initial recordings were too cluttered, she discovered that stripping off a layer of instrumentation was an improvement. She continued until it hit her that she should reconstruct her songs using the human voice as the fundamental rhythmic and melodic building block. It’s an intriguing concept and she’s got some excellent vocal technicians helping out – Rahzel, Mike Patton, Robert Wyatt and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis (from Cambridge Bay, NU) – but the slowly unfolding songs just seem incomplete, like a cappella demos sorely in need of instrumental support. Sounds like a job for Danger Mouse.
