Pitchfork

A Björk tour is always cause for celebration. Less a rock show than a circus or an opera, her live show is truly a spectacle unto itself. And the tour in support of her forthcoming album Volta, due out May 7 in Europe and May 8 in America on One Little Indian/Atlantic will be no different.

In a recent interview with Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy, Björk revealed that the Volta live show will feature accompaniment from percussionist and album contributor Chris Corsano, longtime collaborator Mark Bell, a ten-piece, all-female brass band, and "an old friend of mine who is an Icelandic Chinese concert pianist, and I got him a huge pipe organ, so he's going to wear tails and do some very virtuoso dramatic performances in between sets."

"I think it's going to be a lot of fun."

Just a smattering of North American dates and international festival appearances have been announced so far, but more are in the works. The dates can be found at the end of this story.

Unfortunately, one person who will not be joining Björk on tour will be Volta contributor Timbaland. In part two of Pitchfork's Björk interview, Stosuy chats with Björk about her collaboration with the superproducer.

Read part one of the interview, in which Björk talks about the politics and sonics of Volta, HERE.

Pitchfork: How did you connect with Timbaland?

Björk: He sampled my song 'Jóga' like 11 years ago, and said many times in the press that he really liked my song from 14 years ago called 'Venus as a Boy'. Actually, we recorded the string section in Bollywood for that, and he was really fascinated by that. We've met at parties and there has been this mutual admiration thing going on for years, and talk of doing stuff, but it never happened.

After doing two or three serious projects in a row, I was just like, 'Okay, where's the fun?' I called him a year ago, and said, 'Let's do something.'

Pitchfork: What was it like working with him?

Björk: That was very...very different. I work so much on my own, which I enjoy very much. 90% of every album is me editing on a computer or writing, walking outside writing melodies, or writing lyrics, or, as in the case of this album, doing brass arrangements, so it's a lot of solitude there, which I love. But when it comes to collaborating, I'm really excited about leaving all that behind and just merging with somebody who is hopefully quite different from me.

We always felt, even though we're really, really different, we sort of have this very small section, this sort of mutual ground, in a strange way. It was interesting to go into a studio with a person that you haven't met that often.

The first time I met him, he was like, 'So what do you wanna do? You wanna do something weird? Or something like a hit?' And I'm like, 'How can you say that?' I could never work like that-- sort of decide what it is before you even start. And I was like, 'I'm just curious where you and I meet, where is our natural...' You know, if you put together this circle and this circle, where's the natural overlap?

He wanted to do a sort of '"Cry Me a River' kind of track, and I have a different luggage, I listen to 80s indie bands. That to me sounds like [sings] 'Take my Breath Away'. I love when he does rave shit, like really roots synthy stuff, and just humor. I think his stuff, especially with Missy Elliot, there's a lot of humor there, and also taking the piss out of themselves, which is something that maybe people just don't do much. It's pretty rare.

Pitchfork: How many tracks did you create together?

Björk: We did in three hours like seven songs, just totally improvised, nothing prepared. And then what happened afterwards, he went off and did the Justin [Timberlake] album and I think Nelly Furtado. So he sort of didn't have time to attend the aftermath, really, which turned out to be a blessing, because it meant I could noodle with the results for a year, and edit the fuck out of them, and add musicians like Konono and Chris Corsano and Brian [Chippendale] and the other instruments.

I think it's actually the first time that he's done that, that he's relaxed with giving his tracks or his material away and letting somebody else complete it. So I would send him stuff and he would say, 'Yeah I love it,' you know, he was just really into it.

Pitchfork: How many of the songs that you made together ended up on the album?

Björk: "Earth Intruders", "Innocence", and "Hope". 'Earth Intruders' also features Konono. On 'Hope' he did a beat, and I sang on top, and then I took his beat and layered it and chopped it so it's way more chaotic than how he did it, where the bass drum is doing an irregular stereo thing. And then afterwards I wrote a bassline and took it to Toumani Diabaté who played kora over it. So it became not so much a Björk /Timbaland thing, it sort of took on its own life a little bit.

Pitchfork: I read somewhere that Timbaland said what he did for you was hip-hop. Do you agree with that?

Björk: I'm not going to argue with him, but I don't think so. Come on, I'm from Iceland; I don't do hip hop. But these guys see it differently. There was a documentary done on me many, many years ago, where there was an interview with Missy Elliot where she said Homogenic is hip-hop. And I'm like, 'Mmmmmm...?' Do you know what I mean?

But I don't care, they can call it whatever they want. What can I say? I just know what fuels me, and I think, especially the tracks where it was more of a 50-50 thing, for me I feel very happy with them, they feel very Björk and Timbaland. It's not like me being alien in his universe, or him being alien in my universe, it's mutual ground. So I don't know what that country's called, but it feels pretty healthy.

Björk dates:

04-01 Reykjavik, Iceland - Forma @ Nasa
04-27 Indio, CA - Empire Polo Field (Coachella)
05-02 New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall
05-05 New York, NY - United Palace Theater
05-08 New York, NY - Apollo Theater
05-12 Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre
05-15 Denver, CO - Red Rocks Amphitheatre
05-19 San Francisco, CA - Shoreline Amphitheatre
05-23 Vancouver, British Columbia - Deer Lake Park
05-26 Gorge, WA - Gorge Amphitheatre (Sasquatch!)
06-22 Pilton, England - Glastonbury Festival
06-28 Werchter, Belgium - Rock Werchter
07-01 Gdynia, Poland - Open'er Festival
07-05 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival
07-25 Nyon, Switzerland - Paleo Festival
09-08 Toronto, Ontario - Virgin Festival