Dull Flame of Desire

VINYL FORMAT. "The Dull Flame of Desire" taken from the album Volta. "Sun in My Mouth" taken from the album Vespertine. "Sod Off" previously unreleased. Bjork has always wielded an uncanny ability to draw her listeners closer than previously imaginable, abolishing the division between artist and listener through her sincerely transparent lyrical wit and melancholic genuineness. From her original appearance as the lead of the popular Icelandic group The Sugar Cubes, up to her continued solo career, she has carefully and meticulously demonstrated her rightful claim to the throne of universal poetic ingenuity. Combined with her aggressive, fierce melodic elegance it results in a striking mixture of perpetual dichotomy, at once disarming and utterly endearing in her aesthetic softness, and yet, totally off-putting and almost disturbing in her direct frankness and exceptional candor. For behind her perpetually youthful playfulness always lurks the inescapable honesty of an individual determined to explore, excavate and catalog the entirety of her emotional world---sometimes hopeful, oftentimes quite dismal---with a militant transparency and expressive directness that demolishes the notion of the 'guarded artist.' Bjork has always wielded the uncanny ability to strike at the very heart of a certain human indecision and uncertainty, if only because she displays her own so openly, reminding her audience of the awful ambiguity clouding our understandings of ourselves and the world. And yet, there is always hope in her enthralling universe of poetic musicality---if only for the glowing enthusiasm of a most peculiar artist of the obvious and under-looked, utterly enthralled and taken aback herself by the beauty of the simple and common in the every-day, so overjoyed by this blatant wonder of the unadorned that her listeners, if willing, are themselves drawn into this quasi-fantasy world of imaginative fervor, reminded of the very real possibility of rediscovering an under-looked splendor that can reignite the fire of inquisitive desire and personal artistic investigation. Compiled by Francis Englehardt and Paul Nickerson for slow to speak.