the kniφe - shaking the habitual

Beyonce wasn't miming in order to question ideas of authenticity, was she?


what this post presupposes is... maybe she was?

If I want a statement I'll go to my bank

i see what you did here but do you

Really should use online banking

i'm saving the environment by getting all my statements emailed to me

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

i mentioned upthread that the album is licensed under creative commons so it is free, go ahead and download it and share it with your friends

The Beyonce thing was me making that point that this isn't a debate that's going on in obscure critical circles, it's been happening in pretty much the most mainstream places imaginable.

the claim that music should not make "statements" is ridiculous. most music that features lyrics makes a statement of some kind. politics is not an isolated aspect of life to which special rules apply. it's not even isolated. the political is intertwined with the emotional, the abstract, even the observational.

there is nothing wrong with phrasing political content in a fragmentary manner or otherwise leaving it open to interpretation. the political has no more obligation to argue or convince than anything else.

finally, i'm a bit offended by the suggestion that anticapitalists artists who refuse to impoverish themselves are "hypocrites". walking your talk is all well and good, but this critique is nothing more than bog-standard right wing smugness. we're all caught in this fucked-up system, and we all have to survive in it.

*boom*

I want all artists to make statements with their work - not necessarily political but a sense of how they see the world. Of course the priority is to make good music - that means that your statement will be more potent and more popular.

isn't this just a matter of how the listener interprets it? there are loads of artists whom i don't feel make any statement about how they see the world with their music, they merely provoke a feeling or an emotion, that's all i demand, a sense of atmosphere and sounds that interest me.

I think these things are both true - all artists project some form of identity that's bound up in a whole lot of things, political, social, closer to purely aesthetic, whatever, in some more or less vague way (usually more), and the listener response to that is going to vary by interpretation. But that doesn't mean it's purely interpretation, rather just that what's being received is incomplete from the beginning, so a lot of building and mutation is going to go on in that act of transmission. With the current guise of The Knife, I suppose that could be taken two ways - that it's interesting and exciting that they're doing this identity-formation in relation to other fields like gender theory that have done a lot of very useful things on how identity emerges and operates and such, OR that it's somehow diminishing to any politics of their music that they've already worked themselves out and don't leave much to the process of mutation and interpretation. I think the former but I'd have to unravel a lot of stuff to really work out why.

Contendo otm

Given that we've burnt through all the great modernist and postmodernist innovations, what would constitute a radical performance in this day and age?

Suicide bombing?

Seen as suffragette Emily Davison leapt to her death in front of King George's horse 100 years ago next month, I doubt it.

Cool interview about the live show.
So are they going to bring this down to Texas or what?

very well done, Lex

Indeed

Yeah I enjoyed that interview

HO: Every time we dance and fuck, we win!

Very good interview Lex

Pleased they've released Raging Lung as a single. Makes total sense. Always a highlight and perhaps the most politically explicit song on the album?

BTW still album of the year for me. And the standards are set very high this year.

don't have a clear ATOY yet, but this definitely gots a lock on the top 10. was thinking today that they might could have given themselves a different band name for this one. sonically, it's a good deal farther from silent shout than was karin's knife.

i wasn't gonna bother with this but my friend had it in his car and it sounded great. but more importantly, the cd packaging was v impressive.

This doesn't really sound like any of their previous albums but I don't see how it's out of character.

I mean, it's a lot less of a detour than Tomorrow in a Day

This album creates its own universe better than just about anything that's come out in a long, long time. But how often does one want to visit that world?

Love the username

I think Raging Lung is my favourite track on this album

certainly the most musically memorable

I brought this album along to test/select new speakers. Wanted to know how they would handle the assault of "Full of Fire". The differences were remarkable imo. Brought a friend along who'd never heard (of) the Knife, by the third set of speakers this song was referred to as the headache song :-)

wanna try that w mia's teqkilla

"these speakers accurately capture the sensation of having a metal spike hammered into my skull"

It's actually a super gentle mix

yes! but only through headphones & good speakers. most made a mess of it.

i mean it was pretty amazing to me how 'gentle' it actually could be

ah yeah, i get it.

I feel like this is a classic. I keep coming back to it. There are a ton of great records this year no matter your genre predilections but this one just...takes you on a journey (cheesy comparison I know!) I was always a fan, at a distance, of The Knife's work but this is a massive statement record.

OTM. I don't know about a 'journey' per se, but it's certainly immersive and once it's finished I find I have difficulty recalling quite what I've just experienced.

I love it! except Fracking Fluid Injection, that loses my interest pretty quick. There's enough technical brilliance on the first two tracks alone to keep me occupied for months. "Full of Fire" remains my song of the year

I think I am addicted to this record. It is beautiful and yes, completely immersive. I am in love. 50 stars. I can't say how good it sounds.

'full of fire' is my single of the year, maybe of the decade

the girl in the video that there's a still of in the original post is such a badass

'full of fire' is my single of the year, maybe of the decade

<3

Yup, I keep coming back to this album too, definitely in my Top 10 of the year, with 'Without You My Life Would Be Boring' being one of my tracks of the year.

Ok then. This is the album of the year, right? I don't quite get why the thread hasn't been updated for such a long time. I know that other people have written about it on other threads but this record is incredible, fascinating and beautiful. Yeah?

I found it hard going tbh. But then again ive only listened to it once.

The album isn't as fierce, declarative, and world-historic as "Full of Fire."

my two cents:

I listen to it a lot

I think it's great

definitely a strong, brave, thoughtful piece of work

the peaks are really high

few people can hit the places they hit without bugging some people but I think they wear it well

particularly into the weird tribal-industrial (Crash Worship? Vasilisk?) kinda drumming / patterns on the beat-ier jams

the long piece doesn't bug me but I am into long spacey noise jams and I think they've got the ears to sculpt a cool one

i saw their live show about a month ago and thought it was absolutely incredible.

i have played my single disc more than any other thing from this year, i do love it. it's in my Top 5 however i like Fever Ray and Silent Shout so much more.

Lol I was just yanking ppl's chains about the thread lying dormant (tho this has not clicked at all for me yet)

"stay out here" sounds as fierce to me as "full of fire". In fact, the whole thing, minus the middle ambient track, seems very tightly wound and furious. I think this album is stranger and more difficult to absorb than Silent Shout or Fever Ray, but in the end that feels like a plus

I like what Sherburne's review of the album in spin said about the centerpiece track, that it is the incorporation of their politics into the fabric of the music, the "building an album about not knowing"