It was in Cagayan de Oro where I found her again, displayed on a lonely shelf in a record store facing the street, a gem of a cassette tape among the rest. Later on, I braved a perfectly sad, air-conditioned bus ride back to Davao, armed with a little travel pillow, walkman, and my latest prized purchase, Björk’s 1995 sophomore album Post. On the window throughout the trip, I watched the hills, the trenches, meadows, dark woods and the glacial sky imagining myself holding a giant diamond and chased by a gorilla, a lover on the edge of a cliff, an insomniac whirring into the bustling city, a cartoon heroine lost in a tropical dreamscape. Back in high school, a friend once lent me Post after I raved to her about a ridiculously beautiful music video on MTV with this crazy girl in a yellow dress dancing and doing cartwheels in the street—"It’s Oh So Quiet" directed by filmmaking oddball Spike Jonze—Appreciating Björk on a visual medium is an entirely different pleasure. But that’s another review.

   A musical prodigy, Björk Gudmundsdóttir was born on the 21^st of November 1965, in Reykjavik, Iceland. At age eleven, she released her first album that included Beatles covers. Later on she almost became a child superstar, but the future deconstructivist diva turned the offers down; after a few side projects, Björk waited until she was in her early twenties and formed Sugarcubes.

   Post was released in 1995, following her 1993 debut fittingly titled Debut. Sugarcubes disbanded in 1992 after six inventive years of guitar rock. When Björk’s solo effort came out, it became a hit in the UK and the States—critics, listeners, and audiences were gearing themselves for one bizarre music trip. The galactic potential that Björk showed in Debut was fully realized in Post—called as such because the songs were her letters to Iceland, after having moved to England pursuing her musical goals. After this album, Björk established herself as one of pop music’s most eccentric, innovative, and musically gifted artists. Hiring the help of electronica, club, and trip-hop mavericks (namely: Graham Massey, Nellee Hopper, Howie Bernstein, and Tricky among others), Björk created tracks driven by a mild industrial sound, laced with glittery electronic fusions, and propelled by her sonic voice. Traditional and weird instruments were elegantly combined; her vocal arsenal included soothing cadences, forcible shouting, and emotional singing; letting some tracks explode with dynamism, orchestral breadth, danceable in the impulsive, peculiar sense; while others she drenched in the hypnosis of slow pulsing trip-hop.

   The opening track "Army of Me" is menacing and thunderous, "And if you complain once more, you’ll meet and army of me," Björk sings, the subdued raunchy beats following her lead. "Army of Me" offers a compact and heavy element to the album, a song that is somewhat distant from the animated playfulness and ethereal synthesis of the others. Stunningly, Björk follows with a more emotional arrangement and well written narrative—"Hyperballad" lets you inside the life of a love-struck female lead who throws objects over a cliff to unravel her perception of a relationship. The Björkian lyricism becomes so vivid and ultra-modern, one can imagine the landscape on which the song traverses: a violet sky over a high mountain, a cliff topped with pines and gothic trees, at the edge a pixie girl is looking over the "car parts, bottles, and cutlery" she has thrown, and right below her, an ocean hisses to the shore. "I go through all these before you wake up, so I can feel happier to be safe up here with you." While listening to her, one senses a deep emotional center amidst layers of resonant grooves and electronic pop. "And when [my body] lands, will my eyes be close or open?"

   "All the Modern Things" opens with a languid measure that later on develops into a sparkling symphonic invention. It begins with Björk singing the curious lines: "All the modern things like cars and such have always existed. They have just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment." Also a danceable track, you can glide and swirl on the floor, think of a little tornado lifting you to the sky. An homage to cheesy Broadway musicals, "It’s Oh So Quiet" is filled with smacking trumpets, music box pauses, and Björk in her shrieking best. It is loud, frisky, and infuriating. The most familiar track in Post among the non-Björk listeners, it renders a brand of self-reflexivity and the burlesque. The artist knows how not to take her self seriously and stay sincere about it. "Enjoy" then follows, bringing back the turbulence and bravado of "Army of Me." Tricky’s virtuosity collaborates with Bjork’s equally uncanny allure: "Look at the speed out there, it magnetizes me to it. And I have no fear, I’m only into this to enjoy." In this track, the spectral quality of the album is developed, wherein Björk and her collaborators work fluidly through frantic dance beats and glossy pop inflections. "You’ve Been Flirting Again" slows things down, a calming reflection with the singer chanting the lines.

   The next track elevates Post into mythic heights. An evocative epic, "Isobel" is similar to the narrative energy of "Hyperballad." After the lull of the previous track, Björk unleashes once more her facility to construct an ingenious song. The sound is reminiscent of some tribal-infused tracks from Debut, the songwriting is nonetheless exceptional: "In a heart full of dust, lives a creature called lust. It surprises and scares, like me, like me." I once unintentionally recited these lines in front of an accomplished poet and he responded with no less than wonder: "Uy, sino sumulat nyan? Magaling yan, a!" I remember Anthony Tan asking me. I told him it was Björk’s and his face lit up with curiosity.

   After being enchanted by "Isobel," the next track is a real crusher. It is the one that totally captures the listener, transports him into a realm only Björk can design. "Possibly Maybe" starts with the murmuring hum of a phone dialer, proceeds with lazy techno keys, and then Björk opens her mouth. "Your flesh find me out, teases the cracks in me, smittens me with hope." Listening to this tune, one realizes another dimension of Post being opened: a dreamy, highly emotional room full of silent textures and shapes. "As much as I definitely enjoy solitude, I wouldn’t mind perhaps spending little time with you. Sometimes, sometimes… Possibly maybe, probably love." The listener is seduced into a confession; you can feel Björk charmingly gesturing with her hands, come in, come in, down into her most sensitive core. "Uncertainly excites me, baby. Who knows what going to happen. Lottery or car crash, or you’ll join a cult." This is an honest and precise description of spiraling into love without the baby-blah-blahs of boy groups or the pitiful ramblings of an emo band. Take this last lines that bear a peculiar candor not found in Mr. Carrabba’s: "Since we broke up, I’m wearing lipstick again. I suck my tongue in remembrance of you."

   The next song is "I Miss You," an energetic, techno-tribal dance tune carrying lyrics with a philosophical bent—something to give those who dismiss dance music as brainless pastiche. "I miss you, but I haven’t met you yet. So special, but it hasn’t happened yet. You are gorgeous, but I haven’t met you yet. I remember, but it hasn’t happened yet." More suitably, John Kricfalusi, of the Ren & Stimpy cartoon show, directed the music video. The song is hysterical and enjoyable. When you get to the middle, you’ll feel the energy flowing through your limbs, the next thing you know you’re jumping and screaming in your kitchen banging on objects and utensils.

   "Cover Me", on the other hand, is like a gossamer blanket made of semiprecious stones and moonlight. You listen to it and feel like dissolving, your eyes covered with the velvet skin of night, Björk’s haunting voice as if skimming on watery surfaces. The last track is a lullaby dreamed up by Björk and Tricky, "Headphones." A fresh and weightless sound, this one closes the album with an ether-coated, trip-hop meditation, the weirdest devices and most surreal effects already dished out. The result is precious, avant, and fantastically Björk.

   Whenever I listen to her music, I become a shape shifter, entranced with the electronic musings of this Icelandic Diva of rare caliber. For so many blue nights I have listened to Post—I listen and continue to listen the cassette almost warps, Björk’s iridescent voice melting in my heart, these lyrics of despairs and joys, these songs that make you want to curl up in bed and vanish into one of her esoteric universes.