‘Volta’ is Björk's sixth studio album and follows the release of ‘Medúlla’ in 2004.
Featuring ten brand new and original tracks ‘Volta’ is entirely written and produced by Björk.
In the role of producer Björk has brought in various other musicians to work on her songs and ‘Volta’ features some of her most interesting collaborations so far with Antony Hegarty (Antony And The Johnsons) singing on two tracks, and Timbaland (Jay-Z, Missy Elliot etc) working with Björk on beats that she created for three further songs.
Other artists that feature on ‘Volta’ include electronic pioneer Mark Bell of LFO and two unique drummers – Chris Corsano (the improvisational drummer who has worked with Sonic Youth amongst others) and Brian Chippendale from Lightening Bolt.
Björk also brought in two acclaimed African artists for ‘Volta’ - Toumani Diabate, the Malian kora player and Konono No1 the experimental band from The Congo who won a BBC World Music Award in 2006. She has also put together her own 10 piece female brass section of Icelandic musicians who play on three further tracks. Meanwhile Chinese pipa expert Min Xiao-Fen plays on one song."
Kan niet wachten
Vooral op de Timbaland nummers 
Björk is ok.
Pluto
quote:We're all fucking animals
Hier een link naar de interessante interview
[ Bericht 19% gewijzigd door Erotica_ op 05-03-2007 23:02:17 ]
Björk
.quote:Op zaterdag 3 maart 2007 01:33 schreef Erotica_ het volgende:
Homogenic wordt hier nog steeds elke dag gedraaid
Pluto
Kan niet wachten om te horen wat ze nu met LFO doet.
Homogenic was erg goed, net als Debut en Post. Hopelijk is het nieuwe album weer van dat niveau.
enne ik zie haar liever op een festival dan met een orkest in een kleine zaal
Volta
One Little Indian, 7 May
Every Bjork album is extraordinary, but Volta, her latest, features a mind-boggling set of collaborators, moods and motifs. Right-hand man Mark Bell is on-side once again, but the guest list also includes hip-hop ace Timbaland, kora master Toumani Diabate, Antony Hegarty from Antony and the Johnsons, Lightning Bolt speed-drummer Brian Chippendale, avant-drummer-for-hire Chris Corsano, Congolese experimentalists Konono No 1 and an Icelandic brass section. The point seems to be emphasising great beats, and musical meeting points, as an antidote to world strife, and she's going to tour the world with a 30-piece band. We've heard five tracks. Each is more dazzling than the last. Most newsworthy, perhaps, is lead single 'Earth Intruders', one of two amazing Timbaland-assisted beats. It finds Bjork returning playfully to the dancefloor after a long absence, with busy, loaded rhythms and Konono No 1 on what sound like Eighties arcade thumb pianos. Radically different is Bjork's lovey-dovey duet with Antony Hegarty. It's shaping up to be a crusading, troubled, joyous set.
Quote Bjork: 'We're all fucking animals, so let's make some universal tribal beat.'
Other piece:
"One Little Indian is preparing for what it expects to become the biggest-selling Bjork album yet, thanks to a new Timbaland-inspired commercial direction and the promotion of an 18-month world tour.
The album Volta is released on May 7 and Bjork is preparing to work it extensively. The tour will be announce this Friday and dates are already confirmed for Glastonbury, Coachella and Roskilde.
The album will be preced with the first single "Earth Intruders" which will be released digitally on April 9. A physical version will not hit shops until May 21, as new mixes are still being produced. The online campaign, featuring new film footage, will go live on March 12.
One Little Indian mamaging director Derek Birkett is hugely excited by the sales potential of the album. "It's probably the most commercial thing she's ever done," he says. "It's really up and happy and the collaborations are extraordinary".
Birkett is also surprised by the willingness of Bjork to tour so extensively, which will see her go round the world on a month-on month-off basis. "If someone had told me six months ago, i wouldn't have believed it," he says. "The plans for the tour are mind-blowing- Bjork's devised her own set and will have 30 musicians on stage".
Take care,
[ Bericht 34% gewijzigd door Bjorkguru op 12-03-2007 13:20:45 ]
quote:Was maar een soundtrack dat bij de film hoortOp maandag 12 maart 2007 14:15 schreef warpozio het volgende:
De Drawing Restraint 9 soundtrack vond ik afschuwelijk!!
+
Kan niet wachten op de album!! Ik hoop dat ze met commercieel zoiets als Homogenic bedoelen want Vespertine was toch een beetje té voor mij. Kan vooral niet wachten op de Timbaland nummers. Ik hoop dat Timbo zich een beetje aan Björk heeft aangepast 
Er zijn ook al previews van single (niet audio, maar beschreven) maar ik weiger ze te lezen
quote:Hoi hoi!Op maandag 12 maart 2007 16:45 schreef Erotica_ het volgende:
[..]
Was maar een soundtrack dat bij de film hoort
+
Timbaland's invloed is niet zo groot als iedereen denkt. Er verschijnen 2 nummers met hem op het album, namelijk "Earth Intruders" en "Innocence". Verder heeft Timbaland ook weinig meer gedaan, want deze beats heeft Björk een jaar geleden al samen met hem gemaakt en daarna is ze er zelf het afgelopen jaar mee aan de gang gegaan, dus het zal me niks verbazen als ze dadelijk heel anders klinken dan standaard beats van Timbaland. Er zal weinig Timbaland aan zijn denk ik. Ook wordt "Earth Intruders" (trouwens heel Volta) niet zo commercieel als mensen denken. Er ook duidelijk nog invloeden te horen van Medúlla en DR9. Zeker geen Homogenic. Sorry Erotica
Maar zoals ieder album heeft ook Volta zijn zeer eigen vernieuwende en unieke stijl. Het zal wel toegankelijker zijn dan Medúlla, waarschijnlijk tussen Homogenic en Vespertine in. Nummers als "Earth Intruders" en "Declare Independence" will definately move your butt! "Declare Independence" wordt nu al vergeleken met Pluto! Maar aan de andere kant ook rustigere nummers en 2 ballads met Antony (Antony & the Johnsons) "My Juvenile" en "Dull Flame Of Desire". Ook zal deze maal de Japanse 11de boonustrack ook op de UK Limited Edition Digipak staan! Dus welke gaan we allemaal halen? De eerste single "Earth Intruders"zal eerst digitaal verschijnen op 9 April. Je kan hem dan downloaden op verschillende plaatsen en hij zal dan ook op de radio in premiere gaan. Vanaf 21 Mei (2 weken na de release van Volta) verschijnt er dan een lichamelijke versie (waarschijnlijk weer in 3-voud). De reden dat deze dan pas verschijnen is omdat er momenteel nog hard aan remixen gewerkt wordt. Volta zal geen violen bevatten (helaas), wel veel blaasinstrumenten (brass), kora, pipa, electrische duimpiano's, harp en verder vette beats! Hier een nieuw recent en erg interressant interview met Björk in het Franse Muziekblad Les Inrockutibles:
How did your album start ?
Björk – There wasn’t any precise event, only weariness. I had just finished to record 3 albums in my room, after having discoved that it was possible to work with a portable PC - and maybe I abused too much of this. For me, it’s wonderful to record my own rhythm in my intimacy. This allowed me to both work and have a baby : I was hiring a babysitter and a sound engineer at the same time at home, so I was going from one to another. But after a while, I started to suffocate, to feel secluded. It was the time for me to go out, to meet some people, to become a bit more physical again. I had to put myself in danger and let the unknown come back at me. During months, while I was suckling I didn’t see what’s further than the top of my breast (laughs)…
Your albums have always been balanced between the physical and the cerebral. On medúlla, the last one, the cerebral seemed to win.
For me, it’s an incredibly physical album, I was feeding while psalming, it was very hard. I was literally exploring my body like if it was an instrument. I wanted to move away from rhythms…It was the end of a circle, the primitive beats, a very complex computer editing; I wanted a "voice" record. In the small world of rhythm programmers from all over the planet, I sorta became like "the award" one would like to win: They were queing before me to pick them in order to decide what will be the “thing” for the up coming months..My rhythms almost became a fashion accessory, and as a reaction to it , I made a record based only on vocals with absolutely no rhythm. It was my rebellion : a middle finger thrown to IBM and the “ intellectual dance-music”. I quit that wave in order to make some kind of Manhattan Transfer record (laughs)…
Have you also stopped dancing ?
Oh non, I would never stop. I constantly listen to pop music and I dance over and over. Thanks to iTunes, I became my personal DJ : in my living room or in a little bar in Reykjavik.
Was your new album recorded faster as usual ?
I needed, like every time , around one and a half year. I need months because most of the time I do nothing at all. I have the privilege of being my own boss: if I don’t feel inspired I don’t work. Even before, when I was a teenager and I used to play in punk bands, I couldn’t stand wasting my time for the rehearsals. This makes music hard-working and installs the routine. Me, I was landing in the studio, writing a melody very fast, a structure and then I was off. The other members from the Sugarcubes were constantly making fun of me because I always kept yawning all the time in the studio…This is why maybe things are going very fast when I find myself with guests/collaborators in the recording studio : I want these encounters to be intense and brief. Even if it means after, staying a year on my computer, to cut out, restick, reorganize... For me this work is not exhausting at all but it's quite appeasing, relaxing, like making embroidery...It's an ideal mix : rough energy, the instinctive one, is on the tapes. And for me to play with them.
Do you use musicians as bait for computers, like experimental mice ?
Me including. I know what I want to do, and I only have a limited space for people I work with. For example, on Vespertine, boys from Matmos arrived only at the very end of the recording session, because I needed them to interfere with the beats, the percussions. I passed 3 years alone on rhythms before, so they understood what I was expecting from them.
For Medúlla, Mark Bell arrived when the songs were finished: He only took a couple of hours at home to set some details. I didn't want to work like that again, I wanted someone to make me change my habits, take me out of my comfort. For exemple we didn't have anything prepared before I met Timbaland in the studio. Three hours later we had four songs. Which took me a year to triturate. When I record live, I don't think about the stakes, it's completely instinctive: it's the right hemisphere of the brain who is expressing itself. As a result, I don't think of the logical and structural parts of the song. I keep myself away a few days before working again and even listening to these tracks. Then the left hemisphere takes the lead : "Let's see,hmm.. what do we have to analyse today?" (laughs)...It is this part of the brain who transforms these creative moments into songs. The more we grow old, the more we trust our left hemisphere. It drives our organisation, our storing. But unfortunately, every informations sent by the right hemisphere get off. It must be frustrated at the end (laughs)...I try to keep a balance between both by cheating on the left hemisphere, by lying to it. This is the only way to disconnect intelligence in order to recapture the instinct. When I want to do something dangerous, I make my left hemisphere fall asleep by sending false previsions to it, and, at the last moment, I change my plans and I chargein a different direction. If I wouldn't be able to access to my pulsions, I wouldn't be able to create more music. I would be cold meat.
On Volta, you collaborated with the Malian Toumani Diabaté and the New Yorker Antony...
I've been listening to Toumani Diabaté for years, especially to "New Ancient Strings",a spooky mix between strings, tribal rhythms, brass, kora...It had already influenced me for Vespertine, where I soiled the sound of the too angelical instruments, like the harp or the glockenspiel...
On Volta, I used three sorts of string instruments : a medieval ancestor of the harpishchord, a very ancient Chinese lute and the African kora...Instruments with very vibrating sound, never very distinct, never clinical. And concerning Antony, we have some friends in common in New York and we have already sung together in Iceland.
On Medúlla, you wrote "no Bush no Ben Laden". Do you feel this is even more urgent nowadays ?
We 've been terrorised for more than four thousand years with these organised religions ! Earth exists for more than four billion years, I think she's able to defent herself against those tiny four thousand years...This idea , that we cannot live without orders from the left hemisphere of the brain, by completely neglecting the animal part, the pagan ,the physical and the natural one is absurd. How could have we neglect the nature and become rolled up by the Bible or the Coran ? How could have we obediently allow this outrageous 12 months calendar with months we don't know if they have 28,29,30 or 31 days? The body, it knows there are 13 months: women bleed thirteen times during the year, there are thirteen full moons. But the christianism doesn't tolerate the 13th...By deleating this number, it imagined itself stronger than nature. Sky-scrapers, in New York, don't have the 13th floor : that informs so much about the influence of this religion on that country. Even in Iceland, men imagined themselves stronger than nature and start building large dams, in this country which used to be considered as the purest in Europe... Volta, it's a comic horror film : I dream in it that one day nature is going to revolt...I see it, walking heavily and noisily down the streets of New York, entering each bulding and handwriting a "13" in the lift shafts...It's been four thousand years since she's been asleep and letting the others do what they want to do with her. But now, it's over : we need to admit that we are only a tribe, who has to live with the nature, has to forget its presumptions of civilization and cleanness. We are fundamentally pagans and we need to take that into our account.
Nog als laatste:
De foto die iemand hierboven heeft geplaats is niet de uiteindelijk cover voor Volta, die is namelijk nog strikt geheim! Waarschijnlijk staat Björk's naam er ook helemaal niet eens op. Ik ben benieuwd...
Groetjes Marty
