It’s all very well getting iPhone apps, specially created instruments (the Gameleste – a Gamelan and Celeste together as one) and impressive videos in line for your new record, but there is the small matter of the music.

With the elongated, and full-blown build-up to the record, we had feared this was going to be all iPads (used to record some of the record) and lunar-bound narrative – but more fool us for doubting Björk. These songs may take on vaporous areas of space and time, but they are delivered with soul and talent.

‘Moon’ is like an oriental love scene, made from cascading timbres and some gently picked strings. It opens the record in a fairly low-key fashion, the singer’s voice crossing paths with itself, finding unison and rising intermittently from the unassuming backdrop.

‘Crystalline’ is a highlight, not just from the record, but from her whole career – a constant wailing vocal hook allows her to unleash the stirring emotion from within, the Gameleste falls like droplets of rain upon the fluctuating, electronic percussion.

‘Hollow’ uses a different tack. The keyboards work in staccato and suspenseful nature; the singer meanwhile remains relatively out of sight with the electro beat entering for just a short distance.

With such a mass of sound at her disposable Björk is, in fact, restrained – the songs never really losing focus, just mutating with drum and bass attitude or electronic overload. Such moments – like in the second half of the excellent ‘Sacrifice’ – are the cathartic passages to re-address the balance with the vocal tones and ever-changing backdrop.

Of course it is Björk’s voice that remains the most unique instrument on offer here – her wails and whines thrown across a series of experimental passages – occasionally dropping subtle melody within the process. It has once more built a record of inimitable music that could only come from the Icelandic artist.

-Jake Reece-