![]() ![]() “But for me, the word remix means ‘alternative version.’ It is just another word… for a variation. “When I think of that word remix, it’s recycled, like trash,” she told Rolling Stone. Part of that is because Björk never saw remixes as a simple marketing gimmick: Her youthful study of classical music had taught her to think of remixes as a contemporary iteration of the longstanding concept of theme-and-variations. Today, the material gathered on her early remix collections-1996’s Telegram and also the lesser-known, cleverly (if not at all succinctly) titled The Best Mixes From the Album Debut for All the People Who Don't Buy White-Labels-holds up far better than the vast majority of remixes from that era, keenly balancing the songs’ essences with a restless experimental spirit. She may have come to electronic music as an outsider, but she had good instincts: For remixes, she avoided the usual suspects in favor of some of the most adventurous artists on the scene: the Black Dog, Andrew Weatherall’s Sabres of Paradise, the junglist Dillinja, even Mika Vainio, aka Ø, of Finland’s scorched-earth analog noiseniks Pan Sonic. ![]() Moving from Iceland to London, she threw herself into UK dance music, soaking up its club culture and collaborating with 808 State’s Graham Massey, Tricky, Howie B, and Talvin Singh, among others. On this side of the pond, some listeners were less thrilled with her new, electronic direction: Rolling Stone carped that Hooper had “sabotaged a ferociously iconoclastic talent with a phalanx of cheap electronic gimmickry,” adding, “Björk’s singular skills cry out for genuine band chemistry, and instead she gets Hooper’s Euro art-school schlock.”ījörk paid no heed to critics (including fellow Sugarcube Þór Eldon, now also her ex-husband) who were dismissive of her burgeoning interest in electronic music. 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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