![]() Surprising even her record label, which scrambled to manufacture enough records to keep up with demand, it went all the way to No. It was a clean break, trading the Sugarcubes’ jangly alt-rock for the electronic sounds then coming out of the UK: house beats and basslines, trip-hop atmospheres, and the rippling textures of experimental techno, which she fleshed out with orchestral strings, big-band jazz, and a smattering of world music. (Her countrymen, meanwhile, had been listening to her since 1977, when she recorded her debut album-a collection of covers translated into Icelandic along with a few original songs, including an instrumental written by Björk herself- at the tender age of 11.)Īfter a few whirlwind years with the band, she struck out on her own with 1993’s Debut, enlisting Nellee Hooper of Soul II Soul and Massive Attack to co-produce the album. The Icelandic singer and composer had first appeared on many listeners’ radars in 1987, when the Sugarcubes’ surprise hit “Birthday” made actual stars out of a quintet whose entire raison d'être had been to lampoon pop. Trading the playful eclecticism of Debut and Post for distorted, hardscrabble electronic drums and warm, melancholy strings, it showcased a newly focused side of the musician while embracing all of her most provocative contradictions.īy 1997, when she released Homogenic, Björk had been a familiar face to pop fans for a decade. After the dewy naturalism of Debut’s sepia-toned portrait and the bullet-train rush of Post’s blurry postcard from the edge, McQueen and Nick Knight’s Homogenic cover showed Björk in a way viewers had never seen her before: at once ancient and futuristic, elegant and severe, part warrior queen and part cyborg-a picture of near-perfect symmetry rendered in colors of ice and obsidian and blood.
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