the mood of the album
After your last album, Medulla, you said that it was a reaction against what was happening in America after 9/11 and that your next album would be something to do with feminism. Is it ?
It’s funny because, in a way, you should always do interviews about your albums three years later, because I could talk really well about Medulla now, but I didn’t know jack shit about it after I had just done it. Looking back on Medulla I think it was also a reaction against this over importance of beats and the whole IDA [intellectual dance music] thing. It’s like "What beats are next ?" and all these programmers were contacting me and going, "Who’s she going to pick now ?" and it became like a fashion statement. So I was just like "l’m doing a vocal album !" Part of it was a rebellion against that so... [looks down, confused, then steels herself] but let’s move into the question because that was not the question... So what is Volta about ? I think it ended up being about the feminist thing a bit. I think having a daughter was a surprise te me how much affect it had on me, because I had a son [Sindri] before. l’ve heard other women describe how when they have a girl it opens up a channel, like the daughter, you and your mother and her mother and her mother. Suddenly it’s about this ancient link with your ancestors. But my mom was quite feminist and she was always preaching about this stuff at home and I was so bored by it, so I think I was just really interested in how she’s [Isadora] like, "Oh I wanna watch Cinderella all day" and all these Disney movies have them looking for their prince. I never realised how bad it is. I thought the `70s feminists changed it all... It’s such a big thing, the Volta thing, it even links into the Iraqi war and... I tell you what ; I read this book called The Alphabet Versus the Goddess [by Leonard Shlain] It’s all about the two hemispheres [of the brain] and before the alphabet came, Mother Nature was the Goddess and things were very fun and then in medieval times when they had print machines everybody for the first time was getting bibles to their own homes. So they switched people into their left [logic-driven] hemisphere. Then they just went out and burned people who were being more impulsive and in tune with nature like ’witches’ and women who were using natural medicine. For the sake of my daughter I was trying to bypass these thousands of years since the Bible happened. Maybe it was not such a good idea, organised religion. It’s very left hemisphere, religion, and il becomes stuck in conflict and arguing about things that are not that important. This record for me is about Mother Nature and a letter to my daughter. There’s one song on the record called "I See Who You Are" which is written for my daughter and another song called "Vertebrae by Vertebrae" where there s an image of the earth mother rising up from the grave like a zombie on ils back feet like "Raaaoooowwwww ! l’m back !" It’s almost like a fairytale to my daughter. So in that sense, Volta is about that.
Attitude - 12.05.2007