the tour

Volta is about me trying to be larger than life, so I wanted it to be like that on tour as well as on record. You know, I hadn’t played outside UK for 12 years. And playing for the first time since the Homogenic tour with Mark Bell of LFO – we go way back. He produced 50% of Volta, and arranged the vocal-songs from Medulla for instruments too, so it was like a celebration of us really, which made the whole mood really, rah ! And that’s without these big, noisy songs that really call for a huge, huge band.

I like seeing the different reactions from the audience in different places. In South America, in Peru, they sing along really loudly and sometimes do counter-melodies I’ve never heard and they don’t even speak English that well. And they were louder than us ! Intricate things, really beautiful. In Brazil, they’re more into rhythms, picking up on polyrhythms. This song, Desired Constellations, there’s this 4/4 beat against this triplet thing, and they’re there in total sync. You wouldn’t get that in England ! In Italy they’re always singing along – [does Pavarotti impression] ’Weergh !’ They really do ! And in Germany they clap their hands perfect to the beat. I’m not a nationalist, not at all, but seeing those differences between cultures... it’s important to remember they’re there, I think, so you can play more for them.

TheLipster.com, April 10 2008