| | Bjork Medulla CD Bjork Discography of CDs
 (19 Customer Reviews)
The album, which also features art-rock pioneer Robert Wyatt, shifts back and forth between ambitious, operatically layered tracks ("Where Is the Line," "Desired Constellation") and more direct a cappella songs ("Show Me Forgiveness," "Oll Birtan"). Bjork reaches her peak when she combines both of these seemingly disparate forces, as in the electrifying "Who Is It (Carry My Joy on the Left, Carry My Pain on the Right)" and the album-closer, "Triumph of a Heart." MEDULLA proves that, once again, when it comes to sheer musical audacity, Bjork knows no boundaries.
With 2004's MEDULLA, Bjork's already distinctive musical vision is catapulted into another stratosphere. Using the mouth as the primary instrument--vocal, percussive, and otherwise--MEDULLA evokes the ethereal sound of an angelic spirit and a group of Benedictine monks desperately hurtling through outer space. "Pleasure Is All Mine" immediately establishes MEDULLA's haunting, yet strangely comforting, tone. On top of a distorted background of carnal breathing, the vocals of Bjork, Inuit throat singer Tagaq, Mike Patton (Fantomas/Mr. Bungle), and the Icelandic Choir combine with the rhythms of human beat-box Rahzel, building to an eerily ferocious intensity.
Personnel: Björk (vocals, piano, bass instrument, programming); Robert Wyatt (vocals, sampler); Mike Patton, Tagaq, Icelandic Choir (vocals); Nico Muhly (piano); Peter Van Hooke (gong); Mark Bell , Matmos, Rahzel, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Shlomo, Jake Davies (programming).
Rolling Stone (p.79) - 3 1/2 stars out of 5 - "MEDULLA is both the most extreme record Bjork has ever released and the most immediately accessible....[With] and awe-inspiring architecture of sound..."
Spin (p.111) - "On MEDULLA, her voice is in constant motion, in sync with the beat, rather than battling it..." - Grade: B+
Spin (p.65) - Ranked #19 in Spin's "40 Best Albums of the Year" - "She's a siren, luring us into the mystic with nothing but her voice."
Entertainment Weekly (pp.161-2) - "[S]he'll soon have you shunning electronica....One of her best efforts..." - Grade: A
Uncut (p.100) - 3 stars out of 5 - "It is the curious marriage of glottal outpouring and emotional candour to microscopically detailed and often utterly illogical arrangements that keeps her music vital and unpredictable."
Uncut (p.76) - Ranked #41 in Uncut's "Best New Albums of 2004" - "[A]n awe-inspiring achievement..."
The Wire (p.55) - "MEDULLA breezes with a sense of serendipitous discovery, with Bjork singing as sublime as ever."
CMJ (p.39) - "The beats of 'Mouth's Cradle' spit and sputter, sometimes as a contrast and sometimes as a perfect fit to the female choir that haunts the corners of the song."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.93) - 4 stars out of 5 - "MEDULLA is not only the bravest record she's ever made, it's also one of the strangest and most uncompromising by a major artist to get a commercial release....[With a] raw beauty, intricate choral arrangements and decidedly outr‚ production..." Medulla Music Review Average Rating: (3.7 out of 5 stars)   List All Reviews Great if you are a Bjork fan
I read a lot of bad reviews for this album and I started listening to it with no expectations.. And I really liked it. I've been a Bjork fan since Debut splattered that giant teddy bear all over the music channel, and I think that's a major factor in my opinion. I have always liked her innovation, gathering diverse musicians for live performances (like resonant wineglass players), and adapting her sound using new technologies.
This album IS a piece of Bjork's art. Some of the album is admittedly abstract and I don't like every bit of it, but it's definitely worth picking up if you're a fan, and worth listening to otherwise. Hope this helped =j
Submitted by altkpd (Concord, CA, USA) 
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No
 Disappointed
I love just about everything BJork and I have albums of hers and The Sugar Cubes including some more rare albums. This album is just plain wierd (not that her others aren't a bit quirky) and has very little listen value.
Submitted by mkawick (Dallas, Texas)
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BJORK is awesome
...great concept album! its amazing what you can do when you get rid of instruments. best track is number three...where is the line? check it out all!
Submitted by snowboardwcu (philadelphia, pa, usa)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No  She Does it Again - But listen 10 times
Listen multiple times to get the growth on this album. The car is good. I didn't think it would happen, but this is hitting me as hard as Vespertine did - but it took the many listens. The heart and core and art and beauty and all that are there, and it doesn't reveal itself on two listenings, which is a good thing. This is not junk food, even though it is popular music, which has to be accessible enough to appeal to people.
Submitted by dhf2000 (Boulder CO)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No
Two songs get four stars....
The two songs "Cradle" and "Find the Line" are her best for four star ratings. It's very unique and new to a music catagory. Anyway, she's o.k. Crazy and gorky, but o.k.
Submitted by Kimberly (New York City)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No List All Reviews | Have you heard this album? |  |
Purchase Medulla CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Bjork Vespertine CD (2001)
Medulla
 $6.35   
VESPERTINE was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.
Bjork's first non-soundtrack album since HOMOGENIC is positively pastoral compared with that release's experimental electronic textures. Swathed in strings and laced with beautiful choral arrangements, VESPERTINE has more in common with SELMASONGS, echoing that DANCER IN THE DARK soundtrack album's meandering melody lines, while smoothing out and adding an ethereal sheen to the more angular approaches of the singer's previous work.
Here the idiosyncratic Icelander lets loose with her full range of vocal stylings, though even her most innocent, little-girl-lost persona can't hide her steely intelligence. The album-opening "Hidden Place" starts with foreboding electronic rhythms--it's about unspoken or unfulfilled desires, and it's simultaneously exotic-sounding and dripping with melancholy, a mood that persists until the ...
| | p j harvey Uh Huh Her CD (2004)
Medulla
$12.65
Many tracks on UH HUH HER are so spare that they might be mistaken for demos, and this minimalism works in the album's favor. "Shame" and "Pocket Knife" both consist of little more than a steady beat and subtle instrumentation, but they allow Harvey's bold, emotive voice to come to the fore. Harvey's signature sense of menace shows up on ...
| | Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads CDs (1982) Bonus Tracks
Medulla
$17.09 
This live album was originally released as a double LP in 1982, when the Talking Heads were still extremely active. Twenty-two years later, the bonus-laden, two-CD reissue serves as a fascinating in-concert document of the phases the band went through during its first five years. The late-'70s tracks on the first disc show the early version of the band in all its geeky glory, mixing spastic New Wave quirkiness, funk rhythms, and art-school lyrics. It's intriguing to hear the difference between some of the songs' inception and their eventual recorded versions, such as a relatively straightforward "Electricity (Drugs)," which would turn ominous and atmospheric on FEAR OF MUSIC.
The second disc captures the expanded, early-'80s version of the band, with extra musicians and backing vocalists in tow, tackling the fugue-like art-funk masterpieces of the aforementioned album and REMAIN IN LIGHT. It's all the more impressive to hear the interlocking of the guitars, keyboards, and percussion achieved without the benefit of studio overdubbing, and David Byrne's near-manic intensity ...
| | Lucinda Williams Live @ The Fillmore West CDs (2005) Digipak
Medulla
$14.89
Never one to tread the expected path, Lucinda Williams followed her big breakthrough album, CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD, with a pair of low-key records full of sad, quiet, fragile songs (interrupted by the occasional barn-burner). LIVE @ THE FILLMORE concentrates heavily on those latter two releases, unleashing all the intense, burning ...
| | Satantango DVDs (1994) Widescreen; Black & White; Subtitled
Medulla
 $53.35
This ambitious, black-and-white, ...
| | Bjork Volta CD (2007)
Medulla
$17.09
Bjork has always been one to follow her muse, and after 2004's MEDULLA, a foray into the sonic avant garde, one had to wonder if she would continue following it straight into the abstract outer limits. But 2007's VOLTA marks something of a return to pop form for Bjork. Not to say that the album is conventional by any stretch--it's still Bjork, after all--but there is greater evidence of her pop sensibility than on any album since 1997's HOMOGENIC.
The album's first single, "Earth Intruders," is a case in point. An exhilarating tribal stomp boasting production by Timbaland and clanking orchestration from the Congolese ensemble Konono No. 1, the track is a stunning opening salvo. VOLTA offers other moments of hip-shaking thunder ("Innocence"), alongside more melodic, contemplative fare such as "Wanderlust" and "The Dull Flame of Desire," which features the gorgeous voice of Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons. Varied, engaging, and wildly imaginative front to back, VOLTA is another remarkable release from one of pop's reigning geniuses.
Coming ...
| | John Vincent Presents The Vin Story CD (2000)
Medulla
$16.55
JOHN VINCENT PRESENTS THE VIN STORY contains alternate takes and previously unreleased masters recorded for Ace records from 1957 to 1961.
Vin Records was a short-lived subsidiary of John Vincent's legendary Ace Records, the Mississippi-based label behind a slew of popular and important New Orleans rock and R&B records. Vin, too, had a good share of New Orleans sounds in its catalog, but ventured into rockabilly with a pair of singles by Jimmy Lee of Jimmy & Johnny fame (one of which was pseudonymously credited to Johnny Angel) and Halloween novelty music with Morgus & the Ghouls' "Morgus the Magnificent." Although none of the Vin singles charted nationally, a number of well-known artists such as Huey ...
| | Shane MacGowan Snake CD (1995) Import
Medulla
$24.65
THE SNAKE is the first album, released in 1995, from ex-Pogue Shane MacGowan and his band the Popes. Sinead O'Conner guests on "Haunted." The album is unavailable in the U.S.
Shane MacGowan, who made a name for himself as the bandleader of the Pogues until they got fed up with his asinine, self-destructive behavior and kicked him out of the group, returned with a new band (the Popes, get it?) and a bracing set of new songs that draw heavily on traditional Irish folk music while pinning your ears back with a raucous, full-frontal rock sound. The album opens with a bang: "Church of the Holy Spook" is either an oblique expression of twisted religious faith or an all-out assault on the Roman church; it's impossible to tell which. Its refrain is based on the chorus to "Give Me That Old-Time Religion," and it pounds into your skull like fists against a cathedral wall. When that tune segues into a headlong romp through the traditional "Nancy Whiskey," you know you're in for a wild ride. The band uses banjo, whistle, and pipes as well as electric guitars, so no matter how aggressive the sound gets, you never really lose that folky Irish flavor. The farthest MacGowan gets from his roots is on the schlocky "Haunted," a maudlin duet he performs with Sinéad O'Connor. That track and the bizarre "Mexican Funeral in Paris" are the only musical missteps on this enormously exciting album; though he still hasn't brushed ...
| | Wedding Present Saturnalia CD (1996)
Medulla
$16.29
| | Monchy & Alexandra Confesiones CD (2002)
Medulla
$10.29
| | Richie Furay I've Got A Reason CD (1976)
Medulla
$9.69
Richie Furay is best know as an original member of Buffalo Springfield, Poco and The Souther, Hillman, Furay Band. He issued three solo albums for Asylum Records in the mid-70s. I've Got A Reason features Steve Cropper & Tom Stipe. I Still Have Dreams features J.D. Souther, Randy Meisner & Timothy B. Schmit. Dance A Little Light features Chris Hillman, Rusty Young & Timothy B. Schmit. All of these albums are making their worldwide CD debuts. Wounded Bird. 2003.
Frustrated with watching former bandmates Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Jim Messina, and Randy Meisner shoot up the charts while Poco spent the better part of five years lingering in the second division of the Top 100, Richie Furay decided to leave the group in 1973 following its sixth album, Crazy Eyes. His departure subsequently led to the formation of the country-rock "supergroup," the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, for David Geffen's Asylum Records. The band came with a great deal of hype, only to end up disbanding after only two records. During his stint with S-H-F, Furay, through his connection with the band's steel guitarist Al Perkins, became a devout Christian. His pair of songs from their final release hinted at his conversion, but it was his 1976 solo debut, recorded with members of the Christian rock band Love Song, that made it apparent that his references to God were more than just casual ones. Produced by Christian artist, session musician, and soon-to-be Grammy winning producer Michael Omartian, I've Got a Reason expands on Furay's newfound faith, although without the usual ham-fisted rhetoric ...
| | Metro Two Collection CD (2003)
Medulla
$14.35
| | Jandek Beginning CD (2004)
Medulla
$7.29
| | B Impatient Intensity CD (2006)
Medulla
$9.49
Recording information: Lava-Studios.
| | Nick Oliveri Dead Planet: Sonic Slow Motiontrails CDs (2006) Digipak
Medulla
$10.29
Released overseas in 2006 and in 2007 in the States, DEAD PLANET, the third album from Nick Oliveri's Mondo Generator, finds the former Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age member rocking with as much ferocity as at any point during his increasingly noteworthy career. While his former bandmate, and QOTSA main man, Josh Homme continues to expand the boundaries ...
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