You know when you are old when youngsters start hipping you to music hotter than Prince & Madonna together.

I met this guy who's just 20 and is hipping me to the music that is ruling my airwaves at the moment.

Right now I am off to hip Moonbeam to The Knife, his new favourite band.

Here's what AMG's Heather Phares says;

A brother and sister duo hailing from Stockholm, Sweden, the Knife takes inspiration from vintage synth pop and forward-thinking electronic music, crafting a sound that is equally unsettling, playful, and beautiful. Olof and Karin Dreijer formed the Knife in 1999 and worked on their music in their home studios, releasing their first single, Afraid of You, in 2000 and their 2001 self-titled debut album on their own Rabid Records label.

In 2003, the Knife was nominated for two Grammis, one for Best Pop Group of the Year and one for Best Pop Album for their second album, Deep Cuts. However, the Dreijers boycotted the ceremony, sending two people in gorilla costumes to protest the dominance of male acts in the music industry.

They also released the Hanna Med H Soundtrack later that year. In 2004, the Knife began work on their third album in unusual locations, including a former carbon dioxide factory and the vaults of Stockholm's Grand Church, before finishing their sessions in a more conventional studio.

The following year, José González's cover of the Deep Cuts single "Heartbeats" (which was from his 2003 album Veneer) appeared in a commercial for Sony's Bravia and became a hit, earning more acclaim for the Dreijers outside of Sweden.

Early in 2005, the Knife performed their first-ever live show at London's ICA, appearing with Rex the Dog (who also did a remix of González's version of "Heartbeats") and playing in front of video created for the event by artist Andreas Nilsson. His work also appeared on ow I Found the Knife, a DVD/CD set that included all of the band's videos, short films, and remixes, which was released that summer. The Knife and Nilsson teamed up again for the video for the title track of the group's third album, Silent Shout, which was released in early in 2006 in Sweden and that summer in the U.S. (by Mute) and U.K. (by Brille).

The Knife's darkest, most ambitious work to date, the album featured singles such as We Share Our Mother's Health, which included a mix by Trentemoller. The Knife played a handful of European and Scandinavian dates in 2006, accompanied by more of Nilsson's visuals.
[Edited 8/17/06 0:30am]

Moonbeam, just the intro to We Share Our Mother's Health from the Silent Shout album should draw you in.

Then the vocals will get ya hooked.

This band makes me forget Björk is recording new stuff...

Damn, they are playing two festivals here in Holland next week and I HATE festivals...

The Knife is Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson. They are based in Stockholm, Sweden and have made music together since 1999, released on their own label Rabid Records.


THE KNIFE

Biography by Craig McLean, January 2006

A snowfield, near a forest, round dawn, somewhere in Sweden. The Knife are art-directing the shoot for their new press photographs. They are wearing long black coats, long black wigs and masks that make them look like crows. Why?
‘If we could choose not to do any photos at all, we would,’ says Karin Dreijer Andersson. ‘But it’s quite impossible. Because I don’t think it has anything to do with the music. So we use the photos now to show what our music looks like.’
‘It’s very cold and dark and suggestive maybe,’ says Olof Dreijer of the duo’s new ‘image’. ‘We feel like that if we had been there with our plain faces, that would destroy the illusion of the music. So we tried to dress up as the music. Occult and dark but at the same time, funny.’

This is the world of The Knife: precise, particular, dark, occult, funny-peculiar, funny-ha-ha. This Swedish brother-and-sister duo work mostly on their own in splendid isolation; they release music on their own label, licensing it to selected partners around the world, so they have to answer to no one. They have only ever played live once because they’re still wrestling with the old conundrum of how to present ‘computer music’ in an interesting way on the stage. Within the steely electronic pop of their last album Deep Cuts lurked songs about women’s rights and the duty of good citizens to pay their taxes. For their last set of pictures they dressed as gymnasts.

The Knife don’t do anything by half, and they don’t do anything twice. Compromise is the enemy, repetition a cop-out.

Advertising? That’s a tricky one. The Knife wrote Heartbeats, the song covered to achey-breaky affect by fellow Swede José Gonzales in the Sony Bravia ‘bouncing balls’ commercial. Yes, say The Knife, they had to think hard about allowing their music to be used to sell stuff. ‘It’s the first time we’ve said to yes to a thing like that,’ says Karin. ‘The only reason we thought it was OK was it wasn’t us performing. It’s not fun to sell music for commercials but it gives you money – to help our label.’

Video? Ah, that’s a different matter. The Knife like making videos. They’re an extension of the music Olof and Karin painstakingly construct at home in Stockholm. They’ve made a short film, When I Found The Knife, and last year released it on DVD alongside a collection of their beautiful videos.
For their new single, the Massive Attack-on-the-autobahn Silent Shout, they’ve worked again with Andreas Nilsson, director of the video for their original version of Heartbeats and provider of the visuals for that one live performance (at London’s ICA last February). For the chilling clip for Silent Shout, the title track of The Knife’s new album, Nilsson drew on the work of 1930s German animator Oscar Fischinger, and on Charles Burns’ graphic novel Black Hole. The latter tells the story of a sexually-transmitted plague raging through teenagers in Seventies Seattle. Which again begs the question, why?

‘We told Andreas we wanted something very dark and surrealist. When he came up with this idea it was perfect. Silent Shout is one of the songs that feels most …’ Karin stops for a think. ‘It’s very near what kind of music we want to do. We have been making music for seven years and with every year you are getting close to what kind of music you really want to do. I think we are pretty close. In that song particularly: because it has all the elements that we like - it’s very sad, but hard and beautiful at the same time. And it’s cold, but it’s warm. A lot of qualities!’ she laughs.

The Knife began making Silent Shout, their third album in March 2004. Recordings commenced in an old carbon-dioxide factory, then moved to the vaults beneath The Grand Church in Stockholm’s Old Town. Olof and Karin planned to build a permanent studio underneath the church. But 15th century medieval brickwork and future-sounding art-synth-pop proved incompatible. ‘We had to move because of the poor sonics of the room,’ says Olof. ‘But mainly because it was so old the walls were falling apart so we had brick dust in our lungs.’
Retreating to the health and safety of their respective home studios, then a Stockholm studio complex, The Knife finished the album just as the huge exposure for Heartbeats was introducing the craft and magic of their songwriting to a worldwide audience.

Silent Shout is an astounding achievement, intriguing and bewildering, enigmatic and engaging, and never less than compelling. One Hit is a gothic sea shanty, Still Light an electro/a capella hymn. Neverland is a thumping dancefloor anthem with a punchy lyric (‘I’m dancing for dollars for a fancy man’). The twinkling starscapes of Na Na Na could be the work of a sci-fi Sigur Ros. The ghostly fairy tale atmospheres of From Off To On are utterly hypnotic, while the kinetic menace of Forest Families is frankly frightening. ‘They say we had a communist in the family, I had to wear a mask,’ sings Karin, to hair-raising effect.

Throughout, her voice is manipulated and transformed every which way, a cacophony of vocal styles evoking the myriad characters peopling these songs: solitary sailors, a hermaphrodite, a sickly person or two, male-bonding groups in crisis, TV addicts, a scared housewife and, The Knife say, ‘a biologically weighty citizen that desperately tries to get to know his body’.

Karin says it’s the ‘scared housewife’ who is singing Na Na Na but she’s unwilling – unable even – to provide too much more detail. In contrast to the overt political content of Deep Cuts, for Silent Shout she wanted to do something ‘more under the surface. It may take a little bit more time to see what we say. But I don’t know how to separate art and politics. You make art about what’s in your head. It’s difficult not to think about what’s happening around you.

‘I guess many songs are about looking for something to spend time, and to fill the body, to avoid loneliness and the physical functions or dysfunctions of the body. It's one step forward and one step back.’ ‘And the Silent Shout title, it’s like when you dream and really want to scream something, nothing comes out.

She’s more forthright on the subject of Marble House. One of the best songs on the album, it begins with the synthesised sound of castanets before evolving into techno-ballad in waltz time.‘We wanted to do something between The Sabres Of Paradise’s Wilmot and the movie The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. And the lyrics may be performed by somebody who devotes herself to anything, just to have something to fill up her time.’

We Share Our Mother’s Health, as well has having the best title ever, is a burbling electro groove, like Chicks On Speed managed by Malcolm McLaren. Karin views it as a ‘sick’ song, but also a counterweight to the more ‘serious’ Marble House.
‘It’s a very hysterical and mainly a panicked kind of song,’ says Olof, who admits he often has no idea what his sister’s lyrics are about. ‘I can only relate to the harmonics. But the sounds are… like a new rubber material.’

The inventing of new sounds was another of the guiding precepts behind Silent Shout. ‘I learnt a new synthesis, the FM synthesis, and we have featured that on every song,’ says Olof, acknowledging that his inner geek is really also his outer-self. ‘You can find that on the Yamaha DX7 and some others. But what I use is software for that – it can make very fragile and sensitive sounds that change during the period that you hear them. I started to use it because Plastikman uses it,’ he adds cheerfully.

‘It’s also a way to make sensitive sounds that are also very cold and physical also – that can feel physically like they go into your body through certain frequencies. That’s good too,’ says Olof with a chuckle.

We wait for someone to make the obvious joke about The Knife’s music cutting deep into the listener. But no one does.
Silent Shout is more focused than Deep Cuts, and not just because it features 11 tracks where its predecessor had 17. The songs are rich with detail, thoughts and ideas and innovations piled hard on top of each other. It may not make you want to dress up as a crow in the snow. But its jaw-dropping fusion of technology and emotion, circuitry and the soul, melodrama and melody, will leave you gasping.

These are some pretty extreme claims you're making Herman.

GangstaFam said:

Ain't lying either. That's what shaking me so much.

Listen to three songs of them HERE;

http://www.myspace.com/theknife

We Share Our Mothers Health is like on non-stop repeat here.

It's like 83 Eurythmics x Björk X stuff I can't place yet.

I like stuff you can't place.

I have two downloaded albums, but will buy EVERYTHING I can get my hands on tomorrow. This is how dire the need is.



Nathan, I am SO old.

I used to think I was old when I had to tell people that Lionel Richie was originally in The Commodores and the people had never heard of the group. Nowadays, there are people who have never heard of Lionel Richie.

Okay, music to me should lift me offa this world. Just a few artists have done this. Loads of Prince music, loads of Eurythmics, Joy Division, lotsa Björk, Tori Amos, Kate Bush. You all know my old haunts.

But NO music has got me lifting off like The Knife in some time now. What was the last? I do not know exactly... Vespertine's intimacy? Franz Ferdinand's debut's joy? Some Ladytron, sure...

But this? Tantalising. I love music that makes you puzzle. You recognise SOME of it, but the core is totally mysterious. Like Prince in the 80's and you did not know what he would come up with next.

Being EXCITED for a new release. Stare att he record sleeves. Read the lyrics. Puzzle over the lyrics if no lyrics are attached. Go to record stores and browse for mixes and b-sides.

This band has got it all. Is why I posted the pics. They have a stance I do not really like to plow through. I just wanna ride this wave and enjoy the freedom of losing myself.

vainandy said:

Isn't he, like, Nicole's dad?

Huey that picture of your avatar...

U know what I mean!

HamsterHuey said:

no...He adopted Nicole!

HamsterHuey said:

I think he's like her younger brother or something. Wasn't he born in the late 1970s, like, around the time that Canada took American hostages and President Eisenhower was trying to get them back?
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[Edited 8/14/06 11:56am]

I have successfully infected IstenSzek, and my The Knife fixation is also spreading through my circle of Amsterdam non-Orger friends...

WOOHOOO!

cool music

i added them

very nice

I like them! I posted about Hearbeats like 6 months ago and got zero replies, so I'm glad to see people are comin' round. Though I like that album better than the new one.

MendesCity said:

Might I suggest the soundtrack they did for the movie Hannah Med H?

Amazing... love these siblings!

HamsterHuey said:

I'll have to check it out...haven't even heard of that movie! Have you heard that acoustic cover of Heartbeats?

MendesCity said:

LoL

That cover was a bigger hit here due to the fact they used that version in a commercial here. But I like the original better.

it's awesome

i dig them

HamsterHuey said:

Ok, that explains it. I've heard a few people say they love the song but nobody's heard the original!

Sounds like Ace of Base meets Frank Tovey.

I was giving up on music, thanks Huey, cool shit.
[Edited 8/19/06 21:10pm]

I've been searching for Silent Shout for several months after hearing Mara rave about them. Now that they get your seal of approval, I'll have to search harder! After all, you totally hipped me to Vive la Fête.

Moonbeam said:

This band has taken over the airwaves here in Amsterdam. Love the fact that everyone I expose to this music is just as affected as I am.

You will love this SO much, promise.

HamsterHuey said:

From what i've seen so far on YouTube didn't give me that impression at all .
I actually hear some similarities from 80's underground newwave sounds which i heard many times in alternative recordshops ( GET Records in Amsterdam being one of them )
Didn't spot any hip-funkstyle like Prince originated in his prime .
And i don't really get that age-thang . Miles Davis inspired new generations of musicians in his band , and vice versa they inspired him .

Herman, i've been infected for the last year! i must've had Heartbeats on repeat for at least 3 months.

Another album you might dig is Kudu- Death of the party