Bjork Telegram CD

TELEGRAM is a remix album, with altered versions of nine songs from POST and one new song.

TELEGRAM finds Bjork and her comrades polishing the rusty surfaces of pop music, creating new musical formations that glimmer and shine. These songs have been redecorated with the gracious elan that we have come to expect from this charismatic chanteuse. New installations of drum-and-bass textures, orchestral arrangements, trip-hop beats and hip-hop samples are overlaid on the songs from POST, building upon their subtle post-modern beauty.

The Brodksy Quartet offers a modern-classical intepretation of "Hyperballad." "You're Flirting Again" gains a lush orchestration. "Headphones," by contrast, now features a sparse, tundra-like soundscape. The one new song, "My Spine," features Bjork crooning over a primitive backdrop of mystical chimes and bells, creating an organic incantation that sounds miles away from any territory that pop music has traversed thus far.

Personnel includes: Bjork (vocals, organ); Eumir Deodato (conductor); Rodney P (rap vocals); Nestor Garcia (acoustic guitar); Rob Montoro, Graham Massey (guitar); Luciano Iorio, Rob Smissen (viola); Robin Firman, Tony Pleeth (cello); Gary Barnacle (soprano saxophone); Stuart Brooks (trumpet); John Crawford (keyboards); Nico Gomez (bass); David Giovannini (drums); Peter Locket (conga); Evelyn Glennie (exhaust pipes); Luis Jardim, Talvin Singh (percussion); Markus Dravs (sound effects); Howie Bernstein (programming); Brodsky Quartet.

Producers include: Bjork, Nellee Hooper, Tricky, Howie B, Eumir Deodato.

Personnel: Björk (vocals, keyboards).

Arranger: Deodato.Rolling Stone (1/23/97, pp.63-67) - 3 Stars (out of 5) - "...TELEGRAM is no slapdash effort; Bjork recorded new vocals for many of the songs and collaborated with a well-chosen array of artists from the avant-garde and electronic worlds..."
Spin (3/97, pp.101-102) - 7 (out of 10) - "...Ultimately, TELEGRAM isn't so much an admission that POST wasn't commercially viable as an attempt to make the album more of what it already is, letting the songs breathe in a slightly different way for those of us back here in the 20th century."
Entertainment Weekly (1/17/97, p.64) - "...It's a post-POST disc of inventive rethinking...Ambient and gutsy, Bjork's old-new product defines creative elasticity." - Rating: B+
Option (5-6/97, pp.94-95) - "...As with the best remix albums, this one easily stands on its own, each track deconstructed then put back together in sometimes radical ways..."
Musician (3/97, p.87) - "...a clever idea that engenders some vitally creative--or at least vitally re-creative--music....she makes the original material sound warmer and more organic..."