Björk

Biophilia

The background to Biophilia found Björk with nodules on her vocal cords, without a recording contract and the Icelandic economy in freefall. But what emerges here is hope, in new ways of doing things that don't abandon the old, untamable, pre-digital world.

Biophilia carves out brave new territory for an artist who’s been colonising the fringes of music all her career

Heralded as the future of music, Björk's album/app is a whirl of innovation – and the music's beautiful.

Biophilia was partly created on an iPad and is being released as a set of apps. But in the songs, human desires and foibles echo natural phenomena.

There is a sense of individuality in its thematic concerns and in its use of specially constructed instruments, but in essence it feels like a synthesis of Björk’s work thus far (albeit a brilliant one).

She’s breaking new ground few others know is out there to begin with.

Biophilia is easily her most ambitious project as a whole, but its music is more about completion than competition, even against herself.

The fact that she’s put aside much of the elements that’ve been such a huge part of her music up to this point is a sure sign that she’s serious about the ideas that drove her to create Biophilia.

Here though, as elsewhere in her more recent work, most pop sensibilities are subsumed beneath gentle, nurturing waves of geothermal warmth, and resultantly Biophilia becomes sluggish in the final stretch, cramping the eager plenitude of the album’s outset.

The insoluble problem of Biophilia is that Björk has chosen to inflate what is ultimately one of her least essential musical statements to such spectacular proportions. It's almost guaranteed to underwhelm.

Björk triumphs over her universe of sonic exercises on Biophilia, but she's yet to master the more slippery nature of demystification.

For an album ostensibly about the elements, there are some essential pieces missing here.

Biophilia adds to the breadth of Bjork's impressive body of work but, as fascinating as it is, it's not always viscerally compelling.

Björk, as ever, sounds so completely unlike anyone else, and so standard criteria don't apply.

Despite some flaws in its execution, Biophilia does succeed in pushing beyond the already established album-singles-videos model

These 10 interchangeable, undercooked but over-quirky songs feature Björk's distinctive yet unemotional voice pushed too far out in the mix, backed by some spartan instrumentation ... Nothing sounds finished and she remains a fireball of great ideas in search of a half-great song.

As minimally executed as it is maximally conceived, Biophilia doesn’t sculpt emptiness; it swims in it.

Several tracks do reclaim some of Björk's past glory and inspire a bit of wonder, but the majority of Biophilia meanders weightlessly into space.