sailing

Yeah, travel –I could write a book on it. If Vespertine and Medullawere albums that romanticised domesticity, Volta is more of a travel-worship thing. It’s been about one-and-a-half years since we got the boat, and we’ve already been to Malta, Tunisia and Gibraltar. We sailed down to Mexico and Guatemala, too.

Björk says Isadora travels with them, and that “ some juggling goes on with the babysitting. She does have a dad, after all,“ she adds with a laugh, but her usual guardedness is kicking in, and it’s clear that I’m not about to get a detailed snapshot of her home life.

What about the legal side of sailing here, there and everywhere, then ? Is there a lot of red tape to negotiate ?

You have to let the shipping traffic people know, but it’s easier than you think. The hardest thing is the marinas, but you don’t want to drop anchor there anyway – it’s all yachts and bright white clothes.

It’s nice to stop in little fishing villages in the middle of nowhere. Or sometimes we just anchor offshore. We didn’t know until we got there, but Malta has all these incredible carpenters. It’s been on the trade route for thousands of years, and people would come there to get their ships mended. I got them to change this little bunkroom where we had our washing machine into a recording studio, and they adapted it all with this beautiful wood. Quite a lot of Volta was recorded at sea.

independent.co.uk - 11.04.2008