the tour
I am looking forward to playing live. For every different sound world I’ve created a new band, and that’s been really exciting. Because for me, a record and live are two different things. But at the same time they’re both serving the same heart, so we should be loyal to that heart. I guess the last time I did that was for ’Vespertine,’ which was a long time ago for a tour in 2001-2002. And we ended up playing in opera houses with huge orchestras and choirs, with sort of 5.1 glitch rhythms, and speakers spread around the room. Then with ’Medúlla’ I didn’t do a tour, because for obvious reasons. There was like ten of me in a lot of the tracks, which would’ve been tricky. Obviously I did a ’Greatest Hits’ tour somewhere in there, but that felt a bit like cheating. But now I’m ready again.
So now I’m putting together a ten-piece brass section with ten Icelandic girls. And Mark Bell is coming with me on this tour, which he hasn’t done since ’97 on the ’Homogenic’ tour. Damien Taylor, and Chris Corsano the drummer, and Jónas Sen whose like an Icelandic Chinese concert pianist. And we’re sort of rehearsing right now as we speak, and I’m quite excited. I think to a certain degree I wrote this album thinking how it would be live, which is the first time I’ve ever done that. I mean, part of it feels really healthy because it balances at the end of the day. I started singing live when I was a little girl, and I did that for a long long time before I even became a studio buff. [laughs] It was later in my life that I became a studio buff. So it felt like this album would be a very live experience and not with 57,000 studio tricks
Is it true you’re designing your own stage set ?
Me, when I go to live gigs, I kind of want to exercise my ears. I’m not too excited about things being too crazy visually. You know, there’s not going to be groups of people doing aerobics, or you know... I also feel sometimes if you have huge screens with things happening — because it’s much easier for people to use their eyes than their ears, including myself. Like if there’s a TV on in the room, I can’t even listen to the people talking to me because I’m just looking at the TV screen. I kind of wanted it to be more an audio experience for people. I wanted it to be about the musicians and music, so I think the visuals are actually going to be minimal.
XFM interview, April 2007