Post

Sound DNA

• Electronic
• Trip-Hop

• bassheavy
• brooding
• urban

About

It’s fitting, perhaps, that Björk blossoms into Technicolor on the cover of 1995’s <i>Post</i>. If her 1993 debut album, <i>Debut</i>, introduced the world to Iceland’s most famous future export, <i>Post</i> finds in her full bloom. It’s a no-skips collection, one so richly realized—and so radically melodic—it seems to usher in an entirely new era of sound. Indeed, <i>Post</i> contains multitudes—perhaps most literally on the electrifying low-slung opening track, “Army of Me,” with its percussive stomp and menacing refrain (“And if you complain once more/You’ll meet an army of me”). But if Björk had become her own cavalry, she could also serve as a high priestess of pure feeling, as on the simmering “Hyperballad,” with its stark dreamlike imagery of cliffs and crashing objects. In many ways, <i>Post</i> offers an extant portrait of Björk’s life as an expat in 1990s London, where she was heavily influenced by the fertile underground scenes exploding in England, from Manchester to Bristol. Reuniting with <i>Debut</i> producer Nellee Hooper, Björk conscripted several other well-sourced Brits to join her in the studio, including Graham Massey of 808 State, as well as Tricky, the visionary Massive Attack alum who’d recently found stand-alone stardom of his own. Notably, <i>Post</i> marks the era in which Björk began to emerge as one of the formative video artists of the era. Her joyful cover of the brassy 1951 Betty Hutton B-side “It’s Oh So Quiet” was turned into a surreal, Busby Berkeley-like extravaganza by its director—a little-known skate-brat named Spike Jonze. And French filmmaker Michel Gondry created eerie pastoral landscapes in the video for the gorgeous “Isobel.” With or without visuals though, <i>Post</i> stands alone as its own indelible document—a heady art-pop <i>smörgåsbord</i> that remains as vital, urgent, and fantastically genre-free as it was upon release.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits