After the 2001 release of the superminimal Vespertine, Bjork apparently decided the best course of action would be to shamelessly prostitute her back catalog in the form of a double-digit wave of box sets, greatest-hits packages and live discs. Thus Bjork ceased to be a recording artist for a good two years, morphing into a travelling salesman of sorts with a trailor-tractor full of wares to sell.

Only relatively recently had Bjork finally started recording material specifically written for a particular album; before Homogenic her recorded material was actually an amalgam of ideas and songs she’d written over the years, alone and with other people.

The Dancer In The Dark soundtrack notwithstanding (seeing as how it was half-written by director Lars Von Trier), Bjork’s output since she ran out of backlog has been hit and miss. Homogenic definitely benefitted from the focused approach, which producing her finest work to date. Vespertine is a divisive piece of work that, depending on your viewpoint, either suffers or benefits enormously from its rigid adherence to the minimalist, largely beatless glitch aesthetic. But as always, Vespertine was an unexpected twist in Bjork’s sound, just like Homogenic before it. It’s as if Bjork has a particular aural theme for every album.

Medulla looks to be no different. This time out, Bjork has decided to throw away instruments entirely, attempting to record an album based primarily on vocals. This being Bjork, however, it’d be folly to assume Medulla will be a standard acapella album, and “The Pleasure Is All Mine” is the proof in the pudding. Amazingly, despite the very odd choice of instrumentation, the track works better than nearly everything on Vespertine, and it’s only upon close listening that one really notices it’s all vocals, including the bassline and the beats. A return to form? Let’s hope so. (This MP3 was ripped from a BBC Radio 1 broadcast.)