MUSIC: SONGS FROM TOMORROW

We often tend to imagine the future as something less human than the past. The years ahead seem populated with clones and robots and aliens, as well as the erosion or perversion of the things that connect people with other people, like families and friendships and religion. Perhaps the best thing about the music of the British trip-hop group Portishead, and the Icelandic pop diva Bjork, is that it sounds futuristic but never inhuman. Portishead's new album, Portishead, and Bjork's latest CD, Homogenic, echo with sounds that could belong to the next millennium. But both are also suffused with a soulfulness...