the kniφe - shaking the habitual

^ "it seems to me that..."

and i completely reject the apathetic "politics in music means nothing, changes nothing, boring, next" attitude occasionally expressed itt. everything matters and everything changes something. sure, the world will not likely be upended by this album, but that's hardly a damning criticism.

If a song can make you laugh or cry or feel nostalgic, it can also make you think (...makes you think). Like contendo says, a song won't change the world but that doesn't make political music worthless or unnecessary. His bit about patterns etc is also OTM and better expressed than I could hope to.

Patterns = structures I mean

If a song can make you laugh or cry or think or feel nostalgic, then it is a political song.

^otm

I mean, we had this discussion on this same thread weeks ago.

Lex is OTM all over this thread.

I've been getting back into that troublesome Laurel Halo record thanks to this album - sonically they make good bedfellows although I think lex won't agree

So I'm listening to this again and it feels more magnificent than it's ever done. Officially one of my albums of the year, this.

contenderizer OTM x 2

So I'm listening to this again and it feels more magnificent than it's ever done. Officially one of my albums of the year, this.

― The Jupiter 8 (Turrican), Thursday, May 9, 2013 11:52 AM (3 minutes ago)

yeah, i had the same experience a couple nights ago, when i put it on to decompress from sonic youth overdose. hadn't played it in a couple weeks, and i was surprised by how otm the whole thing sounded, from beginning to end. good headphones or speakers help a lot.

at roundhouse last night, loved it. lex otm, basically

& love the album more and more, it is huge

and i completely reject the apathetic "politics in music means nothing, changes nothing, boring, next" attitude occasionally expressed itt. everything matters and everything changes something. sure, the world will not likely be upended by this album, but that's hardly a damning criticism.

saying the album is mostly vague about its politics does not equate to saying it's shit or pointless. so i agree with your statement above basically.

Yeah last night was great. I didn't get the sense from the audience that it was particularly divisive at all, everyone seemed really into it, possibly because they'd been primed for what to expect after the previous night.

A few observations:

- As far as I can tell pretty much nothing was played or sung live all night. My ticket said 'The Knife - Shaking The Habitual Show' which should really have been a warning that this wasn't going to be a conventional gig.

- Pretty much everything SOUNDED great, increasingly so as the night wore on. The Roundhouse was pretty much the perfect venue for it.

- It's basically nonsense to suggest that the majority of the music being played last night couldn't have been played live, with as many or fewer people onstage (and I don't even mean sort-of live, I mean actually live, the first half of the set especially).

- But obviously the intention wasn't to get one over on the audience, they were clearly making a point, albeit one that's been made in other artforms 80-odd years ago. Lol @ anyone who thinks this sort of reheated Walter Benjamin cobblers represents a particularly profound artistic or critical statement in 2013.

- I thought the onstage performance, especially the choreography and visuals, could have been a lot better really, it didn't feel like it had been particularly worked through, and they could have done so much more with it.

- The bits that played with fluidity of identity were better, the screen projected images of Karin made up as Olof, and Olof onstage miming Karin's bits. Also the section towards the end, when everything got really banging, and you realised the dancers onstage were doing exactly the same thing as the dancers in the audience, and it just looked like a big rave onstage. They ended with Silent Shout, which was astonishing, and at the end it mixed seamlessly into the DJ set that followed, and the whole venue became a mini-rave for 30mins.

- The whole thing was deeply silly and it knew it.

Also I've never seen rainbow lasers like that before. They were AWESOME.

Lol @ anyone who thinks this sort of reheated Walter Benjamin cobblers represents a particularly profound artistic or critical statement in 2013.

I don't know about that. Maybe we've been going to different gigs in recent years but I wasn't thinking, "Oh god, not this again" at the Roundhouse. What may be familiar in the world of theory and visual art can still seem radical at what is ostensibly a pop concert.

Damn right. It's about context and expectations and application, not about whether the kernel of the idea is absolutely brand new in an absolute sense.

Dunno, it feels like a debate that's had a lot of play in general lately, in light of "we all just press play" and Beyonce at the inauguration etc. I mean I don't think most of the audience were even thinking in those terms and a lot of them will be used to events where 90% of the music is entirely pre-recorded, but "woo we are stretching your preconceptions of what constitutes a performance" doesn't seem particularly radical in this day and age. There was an element of first year art school project to all of it.

i just listened to this record and parts of it remind me of "sexyback"

Actually The Knife covering Sexyback would have made so much sense in 2006, I can totally hear that.

Oh god. That would be amazing.

xp Wow, I couldn't disagree more.

(1) It's not art school, it's a pop concert - lots of things that would seem obvious at art school or an avant-garde theatre group can still feel fresh and divisive in an arena as conservative as live music.
(2) Beyonce wasn't miming in order to question ideas of authenticity, was she?
(3) The show wasn't all prerecorded - most of the vocals and many of the rhythms were live.
(4) Given that we've burnt through all the great modernist and postmodernist innovations, what would constitute a radical performance in this day and age? This is the most original I've seen in years from a band of that size.

I'm 100% behind Lex on the 'expectations of a live performance' issue but either way the descriptions of these Knife shows sound great to me. I like the album a lot (sonically at least - I haven't even started to digestt the lyrics yet) and there's something refreshing about their whole approach to making art.

the one time the spotlight was on a single figure it was a woman seated at a piano getting her tori amos on. you assumed it was karin until you realised the song had no piano in it

This is kind of brilliant.

I don't dispute its originality, or its enjoyability, I'm questioning it as a statement really. That said, it wasn't really a "pop concert" was it, this is The Knife after all, most people coming along seemed ready to accept it being awkward or difficult and lots of them were actually relishing it, I'm sure there are a handful of people who just want to sing along to Heartbeats but they're the minority really.

The show wasn't all prerecorded - most of the vocals and many of the rhythms were live.

Oh really? It was pretty difficult to tell because for a lot of the set it was difficult to see who was who onstage, and some of the instruments looked completely outlandish and ridiculous. If it wasn't entirely prerecorded that does change the debate here to some extent.

Matt DC about the ideas not being particularly radical, like 'exploring notions of performance' is not exactly exciting new ground wherever, but I enjoyed this… instantiation… of the investigation, eg couldn't help wondering which ones were karin & olof, questioning why I was wondering, (and similarly wondering about dancers and 'professionalism') then getting weird buzz off that cerebral knottiness and HUGE GIGANTIC PULSING music. I think that cerebral/physical mix (+ yes, the silliness of it all) was a joy.

I really liked the bit during Full of Fire when the dancers were all standing stock-still like galactic monks from Doctor Who for pretty much the entire track, before breaking into robot dances at the end.

I don't dispute its originality, or its enjoyability, I'm questioning it as a statement really. That said, it wasn't really a "pop concert" was it, this is The Knife after all, most people coming along seemed ready to accept it being awkward or difficult and lots of them were actually relishing it, I'm sure there are a handful of people who just want to sing along to Heartbeats but they're the minority really.

Surely the fact so many people were complaining and asking for their money back or saying it was the worst gig ever etc is kind of proof that such a performance, while not exactly being the first example of its kind, is relatively new to most - especially in this kind of context where it's neither gig nor clubnight nor performance art piece?

Very sad I was unable to attend although my workmate said it was totally banging. Would be interesting to have gone to both nights and gauged reactions from one to another.

Honestly I didn't see anyone complaining, most people were really into it. That said audiences can be completely different on successive nights.

Yeah, my mate said he heard a few complaints but on the whole everyone had fun. To read their facebook and twitter responses though you'd think there'd been a riot.

it's not like people who later had a go on twitter/facebook would be shouting abuse while actually at the gig.

oh yeah, everyone seemed to be having a great time last night. Cheers, whooping, etc. It may have been a more receptive audience - there may have been a few like me - I went along at the last minute - had missed tickets, but the internet noise from wednesday made me think it'd be a buyer's market outside (and that it would be - at the very very least - interesting).

I really liked the bit during Full of Fire when the dancers were all standing stock-still like galactic monks from Doctor Who for pretty much the entire track, before breaking into robot dances at the end.

Yes!

On Wednesday night it was possible to move quite far forward during the show because people were either leaving or moving to the back. That, as much as the Twitter complaints, signalled that plenty of people were unconvinced.

Yeah I'd imagine a fair few tickets changed hands yesterday. At dinner beforehand we were sat next to a couple who were priming us on what to expect, and a few people were talking about it in the pub as well, maybe the level of expectation was different beforehand.

Lol @ anyone who thinks this sort of reheated Walter Benjamin cobblers represents a particularly profound artistic or critical statement in 2013.

It strikes me as odd that when a band releases a political record, people do their best to deny it is a political record, or play it down, or say it's unsuccesful, or denounce it for being pretentious. It doesn't have to be a "profound" artistic or critical statement, it can be such a statement without being called "profound".

The Knife clearly fuelled the release of this album with a political agenda, releasing their manifest, the liner notes accompanying it. You may not agree with its views, but I don't see why so many people feel the need to ridicule it, or deny it is a political record at all.

when has this band NOT released political records?!

If I want a statement I'll go to my bank, not a record shop. Making a good record should be the priority. Then give it away for free if your politics are serious, otherwise you're a hypocrite.

So there is no place in music for conceptualism or statements?

No. If you want to make a political point go and become a politician. The problem with most modern music is that there is no place for music.

By that analogy there is no room for a political point in any of the arts then is there? A painting should "just be a good painting", a book should "just be a good book", like a record should just "be a good record" as you say? Good luck with that.

There's nothing just about it.

Also that wasn't what I said.

Then give it away for free if your politics are serious, otherwise you're a hypocrite.

What incredible bullshit. I'd expect to see a point that glib in the Daily Mail alongside the observation that Billy Bragg has a nice house these days.

You are right about the "just", my error.

You said there is no place in music for statements: If I want a statement I'll go to my bank, not a record shop. Making a good record should be the priority. Meaning the two are mutually exclusive. And if you feel this way about music, why would you not feel like this about other artforms?

xp

If you expect financial returns for your work then you are, by definition, a capitalist. They should just be honest about it, is all.

Does Billy Bragg even have a house?

You're the only one here talking "about other artforms." Perhaps there should be a board called I Love Other Artforms.

Then give it away for free if your politics are serious, otherwise you're a hypocrite.

As mentioned above, the record is licensed under Creative Commons, so it can be distributed for free.

There definitely should be!

xp

I didn't know "priority" was equatable with "mutually exclusive."

Making a good record should be the priority

not sure how anyone can disagree with this. music, or "any other artform" is always going to be an indirect way of making a political statement. if it wasn't then there'd be musical accompaniment to parliamentary speeches. it's basically the same argument as when people compare lyrics to poetry.