Bjork – Biophilia

Björk sings it like a sorceress sharing a recipe: “Nuance makes heat.” That line in ”˜Mutual Core’ neatly captures the effect of the eerie details that suffuse her eighth album: organ, squishy electronics and the high sighs of a women’s choir in stark fields of echo, like a haunted digital sister of Nico’s 1969 album, The Marble Index. Biophilia was partly created on an iPad and is being released as a set of apps. But in the songs, human desires and foibles echo natural phenomena: the fatal passion in ”˜Virus,’ the new worlds born in ”˜Cosmogony.’ And when Björk’s supernatural voice soars in ”˜Thunderbolt’ ”“ “Craving miracles” ”“ soul easily trumps software.