Pitchfork

When Björk was creating her new album Volta (due out May 7 in Europe and May 8 in America on One Little Indian/Atlantic), the state of the world was on her mind. As she told Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy, a trip to tsunami-ravaged Indonesia in January 2005 inspired her to think about the human race as "a tribe," and to make "some universal tribal beat" for this album.

Nowhere is Björk's concern for the planet more apparent than on Volta's first single, "Earth Intruders". Based on a loopy, frenetic Timbaland marching beat, with added percussion by African collective Konono N°1, it's the album's catchiest song, with Björk chanting "We are the Earth's intruders / We are the sharp shooters."

In the third part of Stosuy's interview with Björk, she talks about the genesis of this song. Click HERE for part one of the interview, and HERE for part two.

"I flew straight from [Indonesia] to New York and met with Timbaland, who got a private jet or something and met me in the studio," Björk said. "So it was like two extreme kinds of worlds. And I'm not criticizing him, I mean, good for him, I can understand it's a totally different context...it's really hard to put into words.

"'Earth Intruders' was the first beat he [Timbaland] put on, and it just all came up, that sort of fantasy that maybe a tsunami of people would just come and hit the White House and scrape it off the ground and do some justice and spread these people all around the planet...

"I could see all these people in Indonesia that lost everything just kind of coming up, and everybody in Africa-- because they were asking me to go there and fight, to be one of the people to address AIDS-- just seeing those people, one sees pictures, but then meeting them is something else. Just a wave of people."

Björk tour 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