Over the years, we've gotten tiny tastes of what Björk is like when she's in working mode. Snippets of documentaries show her in the recording studio, improvising screams, turning knobs, working out lyrics that were later discarded in the studio release. There've even been "working versions" of a few songs put out as b-sides; indeed several portions of her Post album are culled from recording sessions in a Carribean island grotto. But while those releases have generally been cleaned up and then layered over with other instrumentation or noise, it wasn't until Medúlla that we really began to see the full in-progress spectrum of her songs, "Who Is It?" being the most demonstrable example. Here we have Björk almost stumbling onto her song "Submarine" in its earliest stages. The fuzzy texture of the recording is due to her use of a Dictaphone, which Richard D. James had tipped her off about some years earlier; now she takes it everywhere so that she can record superimposed layers of her own vocals on the spot, without any delicate or time-consuming click-copy-paste business. The careful touching of the piano keys along with the hesitant otherworldliness of the nascent harmonies speak to the ancient "ink" that Björk has mentioned in several interview. It's as if none of the music is her own and that she need only be still and sober long enough to allow it to rise up out of her—music that was always swirling about long before civilization and agriculture and war.

MP3 Björk - Submarine [Piano & Dictaphone Demo]

While Björk employs the Dictaphone strictly as a means of capturing ideas as they break and later re-records the music in the studio, Maja Ratkje uses Dictaphone recordings of her voice as raw input for the final composition. Like Björk's Medúlla, though, Ratkje's album Voice does explore the power and possibilities of the human vocal apparatus. The work is dense and rapturous, replete with mumbling, chattering, hissing, clicking, shouting, panting, singing, laughing—every primal possibility of which the voice is capable. Ratkje extends the capabilities with digital processing, but the resultant display remains wholly organic and is never manicured into cold or precious affect.

MP3 Maja Ratkje - Dictaphone Jam

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In other news, please be sure to check out a few links I've added to the sidebar. My favorite mp3 blogs. No, it's not an exhaustive list, but that's not my job, lists (visit Tofu Hut for that. The point is that they're the best mp3 blogs with the best music. Also, under the "Friends" category, I've added Gentleman Reg, a Canadian folk-pop singer/songwriter whose new video for "The Boyfriend Song" features nightvision, flashlights, a rowdy but gorgeous tune, and a big pile of cute folks making out. Enjoy!