Björk: Voltaic (Ltd. Deluxe Edition) (3 x 200g 12" + 2 CD + 2 DVD)

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“This relentless restlessness liberates me,” Björk declares on the song “Wanderlust,” from her 2007 studio album, Volta, and which is also the dramatic concluding track of her new Voltaic live album, released in the US by Nonesuch Records on June 30, 2009. “I feel at home whenever the unknown surrounds me.”

Volta had been designed, Björk has said, as a journey, with the sound of fog horns and clanging bells linking individual tracks and artists from around the world making guest appearances, including Congolese band Konono No. 1, Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté, pipa player Wu Man, beat-master Timbaland, Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale, and sublime chanteur Antony Hegarty. The New York Times called it “a 21st-century assemblage of the computerized and the handmade, the personal and the global.”

Voltaic, then, is a multimedia document, available in five different physical configurations, of what happened after the record was completed, a journey of a different sort as the ever-evolving singer assembled her live band, made a collection of typically amazing videos and one-step-ahead remixes, and toured the world for two years, making headline appearances at diverse venues and large festivals, including Glastonbury, Coachella, and even Harlem’s Apollo Theatre.

She recorded the Voltaic live album—to be available on vinyl, CD, and CD+DVD, as well as on MP3—in one take at Olympic Studio in London with her new band, prior to her 2007 Glastonbury appearance, presenting the set she would play on tour: songs from Volta and new arrangements of older material like “Pagan Poetry,” “All Is Full of Love,” and a thunderous version of “Army of Me.” It’s a stunning performance, featuring cutting-edge computer technology, an old-school horn section and a female, flag-toting Icelandic choir, all “bursting with raw life,” to paraphrase The Independent’s description of Volta. As the Guardian (UK) said in its five-star concert review, “Björk delivers a performance as visually spectacular as it is musically innovative. Fifteen years into her solo career Björk remains the least compromising and most fantastical pop superstar talent.”

This deluxe version contains the live Voltaic album on CD and / or vinyl; a DVD with highlights of Björk’s visually dazzling Volta tour, full of on-your-feet moments, filmed in Paris and Reykjavik; a CD of remixes of Volta album tracks by such fellow travelers as Spank Rock, Simian Mobile Disco, Ratatat, and Modeselektor; and a DVD of Volta video clips, including Michel Gondry’s take on “Declare Independence,” set in a drab factory, that manages to reach a colorful, hopeful conclusion—a revolution meant to be televised.

Voltaic serves as a coda to Volta, an album about which NME said “Volta is a thunderous return as enchanting as Debut,’’ while Q described it as “the best album that Björk has done in a decade—a reminder of what a vital force she is.”