Björk – Homogenic
I hated Björk when I first heard her. It took me a good year of revisiting Post after a good friend in high school dubbed a tape for me. It was Homogenic that resonated with me first. She took a more minimal, confident and emotionally raw approach. I would grow to adore all of her albums, buying every single release up to Volta. Björk rearranged my chromosomes, sonically and emotionally. As a woman, I don't know if there's another artist still active that jumps so effortlessly between the deeply intimate and the universal. Her albums are so uncompromising and singular in vision, yet she's an incredible aggregate for great producers and artists. She introduced me to Mark Bell and you can hear smatterings of his style over this record. My best friend and I used to listen to 'Pluto' as if it were an endurance test. It sounded so chaotic and unbearable back then. These days it's one of my all-time favourites; I find myself seeking out that level of intensity and drama in music more and more.