We previously saw Björk perform at Hammersmith in 2003 on the Vespertine tour. Then we were about six rows from the front. For 2008 we were back again for the Volta tour. The day was marred by some public transport issues for Tanya. First she had trouble getting a train to London due to signal issues, then her underground train was stopped for a medical emergency. She completed the journey by taxi. This meant that we had to rush a quick dinner in Smollensky's, rather than something more relaxed.

There was a big queue outside the venue, but it moved fairly quick. Some people were obviously a bit over-excited as a couple seemed close to blows over some issue. We went straight to our seats half-way up the circle, not far from where we sat for The Flaming Lips. I thought that Toumani Diabaté, was doing a set, but the stage was occupied by Leila doing some DJ stuff with various spoken recordings and beats. Not really my thing, but I quite liked it when she played Peggy Lee's Is That All There Is and Danny Kaye's Inchworm at the end. This was much better than the noise set that served as support last time and had the audience booing.

The stage was already set up for the main act, but we still had to wait around 30 minutes. Then the lights went down and on trooped her all female Icelandic horn section followed by the rest of the band. Then the lady herself. They launched into Earth Intruders. We got Hunter (one of my favourites) and Unravel, then Toumani came on to play kora on Hope. The next track threw me as I had never heard The Pleasure Is All Mine with a regular band, but it was good. The next guest was Antony Hegarty to sing on Dull Flame of Desire. I don't much like the song and was not that impressed by him, although he does a good vocal vibrato. That was it for guest, despite Björk's remark that there would be 'many'. There were more tracks from Volta and some old favourites. Army of Me and Hyperballad were amazing with lasers firing and some body-shaking bass. These were contrasted by Vökuró (just harpsichord) and Anchor Song (brass). As expected she finished with Declare Independence where everyone rocked out. The audience could have taken much more, but it was getting late.

I'm amazed by her energy. She is the same age as me, but can still rock and still belt out those amazing vocal effects. I wasn't too sure about her costume with pompoms on her hear and shiny frills. She was barefoot as usual.

There was a lot of use of the Reactable to create audio effects. I expect there will be a version you can run on your PC in a few years.

Other reviews and some pictures on Björk's site and last.fm.

I had another musical close encounter this week. I created an account on Orkut to check it out ages ago, but was not that impressed. I had a quick look the other day and saw I had been visited by Joe Elliott of Def Leppard. I guess he was looking for his deceased guitarist.