Unraveling the beautiful contradictions of Björk’s Homogenic.
artwork by Louise Gagnon.
After almost three decades into a career marked by boundary-pushing adventures into the avant-garde, Björk is quite predictable in only one way: her release schedule. Since releasing the aptly-named Debut in 1993, the Icelandic art pop artist has never waited more than five years to put out a full-length album. Good news: the fourth birthday of 2017’s Utopia has just passed, and Björk is beginning to hint towards a new release! To celebrate, a look back at her magnum opus—1997’s magical and unbelievably timeless Homogenic—is certainly in order.
Undoubtedly one of my favorite albums of all time, Homogenic is a masterclass in art pop that finds an incomparable beauty in chaos. While not the first excellent entry into her catalog, the album was the first moment where Björk honed her boundless creative energy into a single sonic and conceptual focus. While the style of previous records Debut and Post were deliberately scattered—containing everything from house to trip hop to vocal jazz—Homogenic finds beauty in a style of art pop which lives and breathes her home of Iceland. Speaking about the album’s sound during its recording, Björk wrote to Jam! Magazine:
“I'm really seeking after something that's Icelandic. And I want it to be more me, this album. Debut and Post are a bit like the Tin Tin books. Sort of Tin Tin goes to Congo. Tin Tin goes to Tibet. So it's all these different flavors, me sort of trying all these different things on, which is very exciting, but now I think it's a bit more Björk goes home.”
Go home she did—Björk set out to make an album which simultaneously portrayed Iceland’s deep connection with nature and its modernity in the information age. What resulted was ten songs of beautiful contradiction: Homogenic is a sonic masterpiece which juxtaposes the organic with the mechanical. It is laser-focused on fusing lush string arrangements with skittering electronic percussion, and doesn’t waste a second of its 43-minute runtime. Such a description may sound excessively grand but, in my view, Homogenic deserves nothing less.
Take the opening track “Hunter,” which kicks off Homogenic with a curious bang. The song begins with call-and-response drum beats which skitter between the left and right channel, laying the foundation for the brooding strings and bass which pad Björk’s dense vocal harmonies. The interplay between the strings and percussion is gripping, leaving listeners in a sort of limbo—is this combination scary or beautiful? I always find the answer in the following “Jóga,” a centerpiece of Homogenic and Björk’s entire catalog. Again, the listener contends with a puzzling combination—a beautiful string motif is underpinned by a lumbering, glitchy beat which jumps between each side of their headphones. This time, a full-on IDM breakdown gives way to a stunning passage of strings and vocal loops. It’s one of many magical moments on Homogenic, and one that produces beauty from its musical contradictions, rather than in spite of them.
Masterfully walking the tightrope between strings and IDM allows Homogenic to make compelling and complete departures into each. At times, the record briefly abandons one for the other but loses none of its magic – the song “Unravel” sees the glitchy percussion taking a backseat so that Björk’s soaring vocals and arrangements can comfortably take center stage. Meanwhile, on the closing track “All is Full of Love,” Björk’s pads her stunning melodies with a meld of strings and harps. Both songs are nearly absent of percussion but still feel incredibly grounded and rhythmic, held down by how Björk’s voice intertwines with her orchestra. These tracks provide refuge from the restless percussion elsewhere on Homogenic, but not for long: other songs throw string arrangements to the wayside in favor of harsh, frenzied drums. Look no further than “Pluto,” whose industrial edge takes techno and IDM to their respective extremes. Gone is the beauty of “Unravel” and “All is Full of Love”—here, distorted drums provide a backbone for Björk’s hair-raising, clipped vocal belts. One of the few moments of fury on the album, “Pluto” shows that Homogenic knows when to hold its cards close and when to reveal them rather ruthlessly. The power of Homogenic, though, is that “Pluto” doesn’t give too much whiplash (although a fair amount is understandable). Rather, it feels like the natural progression of an album whose percussion is constantly bordering on abrasive, just one measure away from melting down into an electronic eruption.
These brief diversions into songs dominated by either strings or aggressive percussion don’t feel separate from the album’s mission to fuse each element—rather, they illustrate an artist whose mastery of a particular combination of sounds lets her extend each facet into more challenging, yet equally engrossing, directions. Here lies the power of Homogenic: the beautiful balance of frenzied percussion with string arrangements allows Björk to push each to its limits. The result is an album which is sonically diverse yet remarkably consistent and cohesive. On top of that, the record truly does read like a love letter to Iceland: it conjures the image of a country that, like Homogenic, embraces the tensions between nature and technological development. Driving the point home is the occasional, tongue-in-cheek reference to her birthplace; see “Hunter,” where she takes a shot at Iceland’s neighbors: “I thought I could organize feelings / how Scandinavian of me.” All in all, Homogenic feels born of Iceland in a lightning-in-a-bottle way—one that only Björk could conjure.
Homogenic represents the birth of a sonic balance which has continually resurfaced in Björk’s later releases. Harsh percussion and heavenly strings were taken to avant-garde extremes on 2015’s excellent Vulnicura, which features percussion from the ever-astounding Arca. Songs like “Black Lake” adopt the skittering drums and orchestral arrangements of Homogenic, but further experiment with song structure by adding droney, ambient passages. However, the magic of Homogenic and Vulnicura was somewhat diluted on the beautiful yet frustrating Utopia, released in 2017. Here, the clash of percussion and strings is occasionally more distracting than awe-inspiring, and many songs wear out their welcome despite being sonically gorgeous. But regardless of whether Björk has replicated its magic on later releases, her work on Homogenic is a testament to her constant pushing of pop music’s boundaries.
To me, Homogenic represents 43 minutes of pure electronic genius. I can trace its influence, both directly and indirectly, on how I discover and enjoy music—the album was one of my first introductions into abrasive electronic percussion, a sensibility which has led me to explore more experimental hip hop, IDM, and noise music. Meanwhile, I hear Homogenic in records with which I was already quite familiar. Ed O’Brien of Radiohead, my favorite group of all time, noted shortly after the release of their masterpiece Kid A that the band was “a bit envious about the way Björk has been able to reinvent music.” And reinvent it she did, both in terms of the electronic music landscape and, more personally, my own conception of how music can sound. Homogenic is dear to my heart, and I encourage all unfamiliar with Björk to give her magnum opus a shot. If you’re searching for a fusion of incredible vocals, electronic percussion, and lush string arrangements, you’re bound to discover something to love in Homogenic—even if you leave a bit disoriented.
edited by Adam Light, editor of Reviews.
artwork by Louise Gagnon.
album artwork believed to belong to either the publisher of the work or the artist.