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Crystalline, by Björk, relates to Ratliff's crystal formation metaphor quite literally in how the song itself is about crystal formation. The song starts off with a simple structure but adds more and more layers as it "grows" to something much more expansive and complex.

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From this video you can see how crystals form from a singular point that "grows" and expands outward by the accumulation of layers, just like in Ratliff's musical examples.

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Just like how crystals congregate and expand outward for growth, trees do a similar thing in how they reach out with their roots and branches to provide to sustain life for the tree.

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Much like how a crystal grows by adding layers and incorporating other entities to create something extraordinary, Ratliff explains that music has this capability as well.

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"In the end, the piece achieves sublime craftsmanship. But it also promises a deep and complex sense of logic for the listener. Through its echoes, its climbs and descents, its circular patterns, it seems to be saying: nobody travels alone. Nothing is unconnected from anything else."
-Ben Ratliff p.210

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"And that is exactly how Varèse felt about the composition of music. The form must be imposed from the center, not from the outer layers."
-Ben Ratliff p. 208

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In the chapter “On the Waves,” Ratliff explains this element as something in musical pieces that links the song together. A single entity that starts the song off grows and changes over the course of the song so that by the end, you have this masterpiece of complexity. This can be a slippery slope in terms of the accuracy of getting the sound right, for it is not often that such complexities can sound harmonious and “linked together,” and the sour result usually ends in a harsh mass of clashing sounds that is anything but pleasant. However, when done accurately, the sound can be transformative through how the single, original source changes and collects new sounds in layers to amplify the listening experience. Ratliff’s example of Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten,” perfectly sums this technique up. At the beginning the song is introduced by three chimes of a bell before the strings slowly join in to create an ethereal, almost somber, feeling. Then, little by little, more in instruments join in until the ending crescendo of all the instruments performing together, almost relying on each other at this point, bring the piece back to the original bell tolls that began the piece, this time with a nuanced sound that parallels the original bells but doesn’t actually recreate them.