Volta

Volta is the Grammy-nominated sixth full-length studio album from Icelandic singer Björk, a follow-up to 2004’s Medúlla and comprises ten new tracks. In an interview done for daily Internet publication Pitchfork, Björk talked for the first time about the theme of the album.

“But with this one, it was different because I knew more emotionally what I wanted. And because I’d done two or three projects in a row that were quite serious, maybe I just needed to get that out of my system or something. So all I wanted to do for this album was just to have fun and do something that was full-bodied and really up.”

The full album was accidentally made available on the UK iTunes Store at midnight on April 23, 2007 for a total of six hours, two weeks before the album’s official release date. This led to the album being leaked online the following day.

For this album, Björk used brass instruments for almost all the songs. These were sometimes sampled.

The album attracted attention due to the inclusion of three tracks co-produced by R&B record producer Timbaland.

The track titles were confirmed in an article on MTV, March 14, 2007, and confirmed in a post on sprk.nl, 20 March 2007. One other track, “Trance”, is rumored to appear as a future b-side. The track entitled “Vertebrae by Vertebrae” was retitled from the previous, “Energy”. “Vertebrae by Vertebrae” uses a sample from Björk’s previous project, “The Music from Drawing Restraint 9”.

Volta was released in three editions in the UK: a digipak CD edition; a limited edition CD/DVD edition (featuring surround audio in DTS); and a double vinyl edition.