Alan Pollard: Mechanized Mischief
Instant Improv
Sublime synchronization makes a great band, but improvisation is key in a live show. With so many pre-made parts, it’s not easy to jam during the Volta tour. “It’s always a problem having so much stuff sequenced,” says Pollard. “You can’t just say during a show, ‘Let’s do two verses here.’ That would throw everything off because we’re all looking at different things.” So Björk and her band mates have a different approach. They don’t change song structure during a performance. They add and augment sounds and small parts like freestyle jazz musicians.
Damian Taylor demonstrates the reactable, an collaborative digital audio instrument he plays on the “Volta” tour. Photo by Dustin Driver
“Damian is taking feeds from the whole band and affecting them and sometimes they’re going back into the laptop and he’s using the samples he has,” says Pollard. “ Mark is very good at remixing and reinventing stuff. Most of his stuff is very beat oriented. Chris, the drummer, lays a lot of sparkly sound effects and interesting rhythms over the top.”
Then there’s the reactable, an electronic instrument created by a band of digital luthiers at the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Its glowing round tabletop “reads” blocks that are placed on its surface. Each block represents a sound, a sample or a filter that can augment anything else on the tabletop. The user can change the pitch, duration or volume of each block/sound by simply moving it. “It’s a very neat thing, it’s revolutionary,” says Taylor. “The only catch is trying to figure out how to play it like an instrument during the show.” The digital music maestro usually ends up using the reactable to create haunting, UFO-like sounds. The instrument is also visually stunning and Taylor’s solos are projected onto several large screens.
The other visuals in the show are gleaned from similar electronic interfaces. Bell and Taylor use Korg KAOSS pads and JazzMutant Lemur control surfaces. Both feature glowing touch screens that control Ableton Live. “Playing” those control surfaces creates intriguing visuals that are also projected onto screens around the venue. The overall show is stunning, both sonically and visually, and it’s never the same show twice.
Evolving Tour
“There are about 40 songs on the set list and we never know what we’ll be playing until the day of a show,” says Pollard. “That could change up to an hour or so before the show begins.” That means Pollard has to have songs ready to go at a moment’s notice. Sometimes it’s just a matter of queuing things up, but often it involves a bit of rearrangement. “These songs are elaborate and you can’t just cut them down if you need to make them shorter,” says Pollard. The technical director and the other band members can rearrange tracks on their MacBook Pros during down times. “Because everything is on our laptops, we can work on it in a hotel room or anywhere,” he says. “And with Logic Pro it’s easy to change things around quickly.”
With so many changes, it’s a good idea to keep a backup. Pollard has a few rack-mounted drives to back up all the MacBook Pros on stage and a complete duplicate system ready to go should any of them fail or get damaged in transport. It’s a necessary precaution, but Pollard hasn’t had to use the system on the tour. “How often do things go wrong? Virtually never,” he says. “I’ve done this sort of thing with Logic for a long time and there will be occasions when there’s a glitch. But it’s like a guitarist breaking a string or a drummer breaking a snare head. It happens and we adapt. You won’t ever get a perfect show in that sense, but Björk she likes that dangerous punk element. She would never want an absolutely perfect show.”
Despite Björk’s wishes, the Volta tour has been extremely smooth and pretty much perfect her for fans. The band will continue to tour during the summer, hitting Canada, Scotland, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Poland, Belgium and more. “It’s going to be one of the best tours I’ve ever participated in,” says Pollard. “We’ve all really come together and it’s exciting to have such great synergy.”