In 2002, while pregnant with her second child, Björk began sifting through her hundreds of hours of archival material for a series of releases spanning previous unreleased and rare recordings (
Family Tree box set) and live performances in preparation for a series of CDs chronicling her concert tours that she hoped would appease fans who were craving high quality live material. "It was a lot of work," she said, "but it fit me at the time, because I was enveloped in my nesting hormones. I was pregnant, and could turn into a librarian." She utilised the dozens of hours of live performances she had accumulated throughout the brief
Vespertine world tour to create
Vespertine Live. However, unlike her previous live albums that used one performance per song, Björk decided to mix her vocals from various different performances together to achieve seamless, near-perfect versions of some of the live
Vespertine songs. The resulting album features mostly material from
Vespertine, excluding the songs "Heirloom", which was not performed until 2003's
Greatest Hits tour, and "Sun in My Mouth", which was not performed until 2015's
Vulnicura tour. Only three of her back catalogue songs made the cut, none of which were offered on previous live albums:
Homogenics "
Unravel" (which was not performed on the
Homogenic tour) and "
All Is Full of Love" (which did not make it onto
Homogenic Live) and "
I've Seen It All" from
Selmasongs. The album's final song, "
It's in Our Hands", was performed live throughout the Vespertine world tour despite not having been officially released until Björk's 2002
Greatest Hits album. By the time
Vespertine Live was released, fans were already familiar with the song, and elements from the live recordings (in particular the clapping of the
Inuit choir) found their way into the studio version of the song. Several tracks were released before
Vespertine Live was even announced. The live version of "Generous Palmstroke" appeared on the "Roots" CD of
Family Tree while the live recordings of "All Is Full of Love", "Harm of Will", and "Undo" appeared on the various CD and DVD singles of "It's in Our Hands" in 2002. It was on the "It's in Our Hands" CD and DVD single liner notes that fans had their first official announcement of the then upcoming
Vespertine Live album. ==Reception==