What people search:
 | Title : Family Tree
Author : Björk
Release Date : 20021105
Binding : Audio CD
Regular Price : $59.98
Amazon.com Price : $47.47
(21
%)
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Editorial Reviews :
Family Tree explores Björk's artistic progression in part by sifting through older material and experiments with musical tangents. Just a month removed from the release of her Greatest Hits collection, which was compiled entirely from fans' votes, this multi-disc set highlights the artist's selections. In addition, the box contains five 3-inch discs of rare and previously unreleased material. Two of them focus on her fascination with classical arrangements and include songs she performed live with the Brodsky Quartet in 2000. Two more are given over to her earliest work, including a few Sugarcubes tracks, as well as 'Sídasta Eg,' a song Björk composed on her flute when she was 15. The last of the five minidiscs, Beats, contains her first post-Sugarcubes club-oriented experiments with 808 State's Graham Massey and Mark Bell that eventually yielded her startling Debut. While it feels scatterbrained at times, Family Tree successfully strips down Björk's creative output into a fascinating history lesson, providing a glimpse at the forces behind Björk's ornate, iconoclastic style.
Buyer Reviews :
When it came down to a decision to to buy the 'Greatest Hits' cd for a not too bad a price or the 'Family Tree' box set for an exorbitant amount I, being the collecting fool I am, went for the latter of the two choices.
Now, first of all I must say that the presentation is quite nice. It is a pink box filled with some mini cd's, a lyric book, a little letter by Bjork herself and her version of the 'Greatest Hits' although bereft of the latest single which can be found on the fans 'Greatest Hits' in stores now. The pink box is covered with a white slip case and is rather quite snazzy, although I find it a bit of a pain to keep all the contents within this box without causing an indentation on the casing of the mini-cd's.
The music is as you would expect, brilliant. There is not a bad tune on here. The string arrangements with the Brodsky quartet are haunting and beautiful, the remixes are also interesting, Bjork that you can dance to, and the roots cd shows off Bjork's progression from the days before the Sugarcubes to her latest musical offerings.
On to the negative aspects of 'Family Tree' which there are a few, minor, but a few. First of all why the need for the miniature cd's? Surely at around twenty minutes each all these songs could have fit on one or two regular sized cd's. Okay, they're quite cute when you first open the box, and the artwork on the slips are nice, but their novelty wears off rather quickly what with having to constantly replace the cd's. I have already mentioned the problem with the pink box itself so I won't dwell on that any more than I have already. However if there is one major complaint to bring up that is the lack of the new song. What is the point of selling a box set for £40 knowing full well that the fans will pay and then leave off a new song that is only available on the 'Greatest Hits' until November 25 when the single comes out? It is an insult to the fans and a deplorable rouse to extract more money from a record buying public that already pays way too much.
So is this worth buying? For collectors, completists and obsessive fans I would say without hesitation, 'yes'. For Neophytes and borderline fans, stick with the 'Greatest Hits' or any of Bjork's back catalog. The music, the presentation and my penchant for collectable stuff by artists I respect has dulled my minor feeling of being ripped off and I do think it is worth the money. The inadequacy of the box is nothing, the mini-cd's, well I can always transfer the tracks to my computer, and the missing song? I would have ended up buying the 'Greatest Hits' at any rate.
(by A music fan)
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