Released in August 2004, Medulla is Bjork’s fifth studio album; an experiment in vocalisation that is primarily arranged around the Icelandic diva’s powerful vocals, with little instrumentation. It has her voice moving into territories hitherto unexplored; eerie, tortured and soulful all at once. Medulla — which means ‘bone-marrow’ in Latin — is a title that Bjork came up with during a drinking binge with a friend. “It basically means ‘marrow’ in the medical language, in Latin. Not just your bone-marrow, but marrow in the kidneys and marrow in your hair, too. It’s about getting to the essence of something. And with this album being all vocals, that made sense,” is how Bjork had described the title.

So Medulla is all about chorus singing, beatboxing and acapella sounds. Produced by Bjork and Mark Bell, Medulla has been performed with backing choirs and chamber orchestras. Experimental, alternative, trip-hop, hymnal — it escapes any neat fit.

“I was going to call the album ‘Ink’, because I wanted it to be like that black, 5,000 year-old blood that’s inside us all,” Bjork had said about Medulla, “An ancient spirit that’s passionate and dark, a spirit that survives. Something in me wanted to leave out civilisation, to rewind to before it all happened. What if we do without civilisation and religion and patriotism, without the stuff that has gone wrong?”

Consequently, a lot of the music emerges from deep within the singer’s throat, modulating moods that range from plaintive to primitive to extremely modern in terms of the processed harmonies combined with orgasmic cries and breathing exercises.

With influences of traditional Celtic mouth music and underpinnings of her earlier style punctuated by a healthy dose of howls a la Goth Rock, Medulla also showcases a host of guest artistes like ex-Faith No More vocalist Mike Patton, throat artiste Tagaq, The Roots rapper Rahzel and ex-Soft Machine frontman Robert Wyatt.

These elemental vocal experiments come with lyrics that are as profound as random, following the trajectory of the vocals. Songs like Desired Constellation with lines like “With a palm full of stars/I throw them like dice on the table/Until the desired constellation appears” derives from a gut emotion, whereas other songs are sometimes confessional, sometimes quasi-religious and sometimes traditional folk.