Alan Pollard: Mechanized Mischief
Björk is the undisputed mistress of mechanized mischief. Her shows feature signature impish vocals and fine melodies backed by howling live instrumentals, electronic percussion, and edgy digital instrumentation. But in generating this complex sound, Björk isn’t alone. She’s backed by a brain trust of musicians, composers and technical experts. When she’s on tour, they help her visions become reality.
For the past 10 years, technical director Alan Pollard has been a member of that trust. And on Björk’s latest tour, “Volta,” he has streamlined the artist’s electronic music-making orchestra. Today the tracks that were created using dozens of samplers, gizmos and computers are triggered and synched with a few MacBook Pros running Logic Pro and Ableton Live. “It’s the simplest and most streamlined system we’ve ever used on tour,” says Pollard. “It’s also the most flexible, and it gives Björk and the rest of the band freedom to play almost any song in her repertoire.”
It also lets the Icelandic virtuoso incorporate live musicians into the act more easily. In the past her shows have featured harpists, string ensembles and various soloists. The Volta tour features 10 horn players affectionately called the Icelandic Brass Girls, keyboardist J•nas Sen and percussionist Chris Corsano. Long-time Björk collaborator Mark Bell mans a MacBook Pro running Ableton Live. Techno wizard Damian Taylor sports a similar rig and jams on the “reactable,” a newfangled collaborative electronic music instrument. All of it, human-powered and silicon-driven, relies in some way on Pollard and his MacBook Pro running Logic.
Big Breaks
Pollard has dealt in live electronic orchestration since the days of the Atari. “I started off working in a music shop,” he says. “I sold studio sound equipment in the very early days of midi.” The young English salesman had aspirations to belt out sound effects for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but they didn’t last. “It seemed that you were going to be a tea boy for a very long time there,” he says. Then a friend hired him to set up some keyboards during a tour.
“Before too long I found myself running computers on stage,” Pollard says. During the next few years, he became the on-stage tech guy for a few popular bands like The Cure, Human League, Annie Lennox, Tears for Fears, Merz, Clannad, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Kylie Minogue, Belinda Carlisle, Neneh Cherry, Psychedelic Furs, and Matmos. In 1996, he joined Björk on her tour to promote the album “Post.” He became her live technical advisor and worked with her off and on during the next decade.
Björk’s shows can be exhilarating and epic productions featuring pyrotechnics, lasers and stacks of current-sucking electronic music monsters. They can also be acoustic and organic, nothing more than vocals and naturally resonant instruments. “Her live shows evolve quite a lot,” says Pollard. “She’s very hands on and she works closely with me and everyone in the shows to make them come to life. This show is no different in that regard.”
Blistering Beats
Volta is different from previous tours in other ways. It’s the first time that Pollard has packed virtually every Björk track onto a laptop. It’s no easy task. The music is intricate and Pollard has to strip out or mute the parts that are going to be played live. He ends up with skeletal tracks that his band mates can build on.
“Mark is taking the big crunchy stuff and Damian is doing a lot of the extra stuff on top,” says Pollard. Horns, keyboard, vocals and some percussion are filled in live. “Sometimes I only have two or three tracks (parts of a song) running,” he says.
And everybody has to be in sync. Pollard runs midi time code out of Logic Pro to Bell and Taylor and a time-keeping click track to the brass girls. He also has two digital metronomes at either end of the stage. Their pulsing lights help keep everyone together. “Initially, in rehearsals, it was very hard with the brass players being new to it, and these are complicated songs,” says Pollard. “Then all of the sudden the different elements started working together and it became a good show fairly quickly.”
Pollard also uses visual cues to synchronize the show. “I use floating text markers in Logic to denote specific things that I have to do on a song,” he says. “That’s very useful. In the heat of battle, with the smoke machine going and the lights flashing, it’s all too easy to space out and forget what’s going on.” Those simple text reminders keep Pollard and the rest of the band on track.
