Despite having dedicated my best years to worshipping at the altar of alternative rock, I've always suspected that if one genius featured in the soundtrack to my life, it would be Björk. Having gone through an interesting but rather tune-avoiding period since 1998's Dancer in the Dark soundtrack, the news that she's coming back with a new album featuring at least seven tracks produced and co-written with Timbaland has me salivating with anticipation.
Hip-hop and R&B's most celebrated writer/producer, Timbaland has been largely responsible for more than his share of amazing future pop records in the past decade - Aaliyah's Try Again, Missy's Get Ur Freak On and Destiny's Child's Get On The Bus to name just three.
Like Phil Spector he patented a signature sound - squelching bass underpinning the stuttering high-hats and tapestry of backwards and forwards syncopation - that he's made his own but rarely repeated. Last year he was partly responsible for two classic singles: Nelly Furtado's Maneater and Justin Timberlake's SexyBack, and after a fallow period in which he made merely good - rather than great - records with the likes of The Game, is clearly a man at the top of his form.
Björk's last studio album was Medulla, an uncompromising part-drill'n'bass album constructed entirely from human voices. (2005's Drawing Restraint 9, which sound tracked her husband Matthew Barney's film of the same name, was even weirder.) Even if you didn't manage to make it through to the end, you could be somehow cheered by the fact that at least one big-selling artist wasn't frightened to go to music's outer limits.
However, after so many years of avant garde experimentation - during which Britain's indie kids fell back in love with boring old guitars - it's easy to forget quite what La Gudmundsdottir did for pop music in the 90s; the way her inspired melodies and North Sea twang could create something beautiful, (Bachelorette) or euphoric (Big Time Sensuality) and visceral (Army Of Me), while still being accessible.
Recently Björk's been showing signs of getting her house in order. Having put her journalist-decking days long behind her, and drawn a line under her old band the Sugarcubes with their recent reunion gig in Reykjavik, the signs all point to a return to the days where she destroyed dancefloors rather than the kind of arty salons you imagine she and Barney might inhabit.
As to what the album sounds like, Björk isn't saying, while Timbaland has been maddeningly vague: "It's crazy - I'm going tonight to go hear it. It's hip-hop. I can't really describe it to you - if I had it right now I'd just play it to you. That's the best way for you to understand, and I'd let you tell me what it is." But I for one am reserving space in my albums of 2007 list on faith (and track record) alone. Let's just hope that this time, Tim resists his one tragic flaw: the urge to rap.
