Debut

THOSE FAMILIAR with the oeuvre of Iceland's most famous indie-band The Sugarcubes will already be aware that Bjork has a voice that could cut diamonds at fifty paces.

This, her first solo outing, is simply dazzling. From the first track, the rumblingly brilliant 'Human Behaviour', she works her way through gem after gem of thoroughly uplifting effect. Producer Nellee Cooper of Soul II Soul fame lets Pop and Jazz collide with Rave and the odd touch of World Music, providing the perfect weirdly beautiful soundscapes for Bjork to flutter, clatter, trill and chirrup through.

"If you ever get close to a human/and human behaviour/be ready to get confused . . ." run the opening lines of the album, with the singer immediately copper-fastening her "other-worldy" connections, but despite the fact that the Icelandic pixie has always seemed to have been on loan to us from another planet (it would be easier to believe that she's related to ET than to, say, Roxette) Debut turns out to be the warmest, sexiest and most human album yet to emerge from the dance-rave cupboard.

This is partly due to the lyrics - the maternal protectiveness of 'Come To Me', the life-affirming exuberance of 'Big Time Sensuality' and 'There's More To Life Than This' - but they are helped hugely by Hooper's musical backdrops: womby, slightly Asiatic atmospherics in the case of the former and live crowd sounds recorded in the toilet of London's Milk Bar club in the latter.

Bjork's vocal gymnastics are never allowed to irritate; indeed the aforementioned tracks leave you wishing they were longer and because Hooper's pinch-of-this-pinch-of-that appeal is considered and intelligent, Debut is a genuinely eclectic album rather than just a hipper-than-thou hotch-potch.

No doubt hard-core rave types will take a dim view of this organic and very feminine element creeping into their deliberately sterile anti-music, but for the rest of us it's nothing short of bliss.

* Cathy Dillon