Bjork: All Is Full Of Love

• Cat.no: 242TP7DVD
• Cert: E
• Running time: 4:25 plus audio tracks
• Released 7th June 1999
• Pressing: 1999
• Region(s): 0, 2 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 3
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
• Languages: English
• Lyrics: None
• Widescreen: 1.66:1 (15:9)
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: No
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £6.99
• Extras : Scene index

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Director:

Chris Cunningham

All Is Full Of Loveis the first fully-eligible chart single to be released on DVD, coming four weeksafter Phuture 2000 by Carl Cox which fell outside of the BPI’s latest rulesthat a single must have no more than three tracks and a total running time of twentyminutes in order to get a chart placing.

The first track is the video itself – a science-fiction love story that stars Bjorkas a robot and is directed by Chris Cunningham who has previously worked withMadonna and Portishead, as well as turning the Aphex Twin into a woman. Chris workedday and night for weeks, painstakingly turning Bjork into a robot, but claims it wasworth it and that it’s his best video to date. It’s certainly very impressive andyou’ll find it hard to spot the joins. All Is Full Of Love is a gloriousballad and a very memorable one which deserved a much higher chart placing than theNo.24 entry it obtained.

The other two tracks are remixes of the song, one by Funkstorung and the other beingMark Stents’ original string-laden mix. Other mixes are available on the otherCD singles also out now.

What this engaging video needed is an absolutely perfect picture with zeroartifacts and that’s exactly what you get. Although the back of the case saythe video is presented in an aspect ratio of 4:3, it’s actually 1.66:1 (15:9).

The average bitrate is a misleading-low 3.18Mb/s as that includes the time allocatedto the two audio-only tracks which hover around 2Mb/s bringing the overall averagedown when the video itself probably averages out to around 7Mb/s and occasionallypeaks over 9Mb/s. The disc is not 16:9-enhanced for widescreen televisions even thoughit’s technically possible and it’s a practice rarely used for a disc with a ratio ofless than 16:9. Even though it’s a case of encoding a picture with small amount of blackbars at the side, within the 16:9-frame, such a feature may push the cost of the singleup and the video still looks good when zoomed in on a widescreen TV.

The sound quality is top-notch for both the video track and the ensuing audio-onlytracks.

There are 3 chapters, one for each version of the song. The first track is the video,with two audio-only remixes to follow.

1. All Is Full Of Love (video edit) (4:25)
2. All Is Full Of Love (Funkstorung Exclusive mix) (4:36)
3. All Is Full Of Love (Strings) (4:46)

Languages & Lyrics :

The single is sung in English but no lyrics are included.

Menu :

The menu is a static and silent affair with the new Bjork logo and a choice of whichtrack to play.

On inserting the disc, you see the copyright info, a One Little Indian Records logoand then the menu.

Overall, this is certainly an interesting title to use as the first chart-eligibleDVD single and at a cost of £6.99 it’s not really much more than the averageimport single which fans of an artist/band are willing to pay, even though it’s nearlydouble the price of a standard CD single. It’s become a popular option to includean MPEG1-encoded promo track on CD singles these days which can have a very poorquality – the same as that of Video CDs as it uses the same compression methods -so perhaps in time DVD singles will also become the norm and the price will comedown.