the kniφe - shaking the habitual

Cool track DJP! I def hear a lot of sonic similarities. I'm saying "radical" bc of the way the material is handled, though, i.e. generatively or pseudo-generatively, see also "Confield" and Paul Dolden and any number of electroacoustic composers or Max/MSP nerds. The difference is that this album ~sounds great~ in a way that suggests it was made painstakingly with real hardware synths, or was just made really well with softsynths

amateurist I agree with 1 and 2 and also 3

xxp yeah, do it, D! i know next to nothing about the music you've mentioned (except obvious stuff like early skinny puppy and cab voltaire).

just gonna post songs from my past that fall into the various sonic arenas that I feel this album plays in; not to say all of these songs are constructed in the same way or are "better", but rather that there's a known vocabulary here that this album is operating within that I fucking love

Skinny Puppy - "Love" from the album Bites (which btw if you don't have that album FUCKING GET IT IT IS AMAZING FRONT TO BACK)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh2OOvpiDhs

from that same album, "Church"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA9Khv4NE1k

was gonna post "Assimilate" but yeah everyone knows that already; I just don't think they would consciously link it to the triplet shuffle of "A Tooth for an Eye" the way I did

Severed Heads - "Exploring the Secrets of Deaf Mutes" from Since the Accident

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__gj9XQqUOo

also by Severed Heads, "Goodbye Tonsils" from City Slab Horror (with tracks from Blubberknife)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH6X3txWyTs

out of the industrial tape loop realm and more into the 90s acid scene, I keep going on and on and on about this track but it's fucking astonishing esp. on good bass-heavy speakers where you can feel the oscillations

"Exposure" - Peak Experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J6O55zGWug

then Tresor Records comes into town:

"Ploy" - Maurizio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXPMp_-WdcU

"Der Klang Der Familie" - 3Phase feat. Dr. Motte (lol I posted this on another thread yesterday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTHIHpi5IJI

"Drugs Work" - System 01

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqCUQIE7zo8

btw I just ordered a fucking bomb-ass comp off of Amazon yesterday that is 3 discs of Tresor awesomeness and when it arrives I likely will disappear from ILX for a week

here's a Youtube playlist of the entire Doubting Thomas album, which was a Skinny Puppy/Severed Heads collaboration from 1991

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_afns-FBeK8&list=PL77B0179AC5620A7A

I'm getting tied up in a big nostalgia vortex here; the point behind is less "this is exactly what STI is doing" because obviously that's wrong, but rather "here are the foundations for this album and it's super cool where they've gone with it"

the clearest antecedent to this is the early Severed Heads stuff, which can be heard here:

http://severedheads.bandcamp.com/

Tom Ellard's transformation from "industrial tape loop nightmare man" into "techno New Order for weirdos" is one of my favorite things in all of music

OTOH, a big middle chunk of STH is 4th world pastiche ala:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZp3UaYtT3U

DJP, I'm psyched for your nostalgia trip. I love Tresor and hard 90s tehcno in general. Perhaps we need a hard techno thread in general. I can't recall much discussion of this stuff on ILM previously.

Think I started some several years ago now. I'd like a bit of that. Haven't listened to hard tech for ages

not feeling this album, i wanted more songs (which i'm sure has been discussed). i bought it blind without listening to a second of it beforehand. glad i only got the single disc of this album. yeah it's organic and has amazing sound. two listens in so maybe it gets better but i would rather hear Fever Ray at this point.

no 19-minute drone track, no credibility

i least i bought it, don't think too many can say that.

at least...

i only regret not springing the extra $12 for the 3lp. so much pink.

i actually should have bought the 3LP version. the problem is i have no modern LP's as all my albums are old stuff. plus my record play and records for that matter are in my garage.

play player

The 3lp is super beautiful. The so much pink has a nice greeness to it

Amateurist otm. I wouldn't have a problem with political slants to music if they could be expressed clearly, but generally they can't. It becomes a bit like people decoding scripture, finding nuggets that specifically appeal.

I mean, I suppose people do this with the words of politicians or political theorists, to an extent, but they're not as open to interpretation, and these people are subjected to scrutiny.

The problem with explicit politics in music is that if you start singing "Fuck John Major and the Criminal Justice Bill", you're already giving your songs up to redundancy in a couple of years time. In the case of Crass or Public Enemy it can have the positive effect of historical resonance but it's risky. On the whole a more universal approach to music and politics tends to work better.

I am really hoping Modeselektor does a remix of something off this.

one last touchpoint: Savage Aural Hotbed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvhKOpbkpY8

wish I could find a good clip of "Big Arms"

Not sonic touchstones, obviously, but Snivilisation was doing philosophy & politics & techno 19 years ago.

Sort of.

This is all very well and good, but all these examples are from before the agit-prop watershed of the mid-'90s. Even Autechre released the Anti-EP in 1994 (another example of instrumental electronic music as political statement). I really can't think of many good examples from the last fifteen years that does what STH is doing - especially not electronic music.

I'm mistrustful of theory in general but it doesn't make for great lyrics. Show don't tell.

so one minute the Knife aren't explicit enough, next they're too explicit... no pleasing some people.

dog latin, you are having an entirely different conversation from me

me: here is a bunch of music I listened to in the 80s and 90s that remind me of/prepared me for the textures and structures on Shaking the Habitual
you: NO ONE HAS BEEN POLITICAL FOR FIFTEEN YEARS
me: uh

The problem with explicit politics in music is that if you start singing "Fuck John Major and the Criminal Justice Bill", you're already giving your songs up to redundancy in a couple of years time.

for the record i don't really agree w/ what's being said about "political" lyrics. surely you can write well about politics as much as you can write well about love or friendship or anything else. unfortunately most pop musicians tend to take one of the following options: (1) a bunch of platitudes /banalities that pass as "politics" but don't mean a damn thing (call this the "u2" option, or perhaps the "will.i.am" option); (2) obscurantism; (3) sloganeering (the "rage against the machine" option, or maybe the "le tigre" option). this knife album seems mostly to indulge (2) with occasional flashes of (3).

none of these approaches seems ideally suited to the task of using poetic language to crystallize or reveal the layers of a "political" situation broadly construed. note that when the chips are down option (1) can do more good in the world, viz. "we are the world." option (3) only functions in a narrow context; i.e. preaching to the converted. i don't think there's really much glory in option (2).

of course many many people, in all kinds of genres, have transcended these two options. so politics in pop music is hardly doomed. i don't really pay enough attention to what's going on right now but reaching back into the distant past, elvis costello's "shipbuilding" is kind of an unassailable example of a sharp political lyric that's more than just sloganeering.

....on a totally separate note, the "ambient" tracks here, unlike the vast majority of "ambient" or "drone" tracks on records by pop-rock bands, are actually really good and thought-through. IMO.

terre thaemlitz / dj sprinkles / ultrared to thread

xxpost No DJP - I'm not disagreeing with you, sorry I got a bit confused - just realised you're posting examples of stuff that is musically similar to STH but Nick threw me off by mentioning Snivilisation as an example of dance + politics.

This aside, I think that while 'Snivilisation' is a good examples of something that might have informed or preceded STH, such examples can be found in abundance throughout the '80s and '90s, tailing off at a certain point circa 1995. Much of late-80s and early-90s dance/industrial/rave culture was politically informed or counter-culturally influenced in some way. Going out to a rave in a warehouse or to a field was seen as a form of activism or rule-breaking at least, while the music itself was demonised by the mainstream media, frowned upon by the establishment for its repetitiveness and the fact it 'made' teenagers take drugs. There are dozens of examples, from 'Dance Before The Police Come' to The Orb's more subtle use of samples on tracks like 'Towers Of Dub' ('Is there a Haile Selassie there? No.') that used dissent or cultural touchstones to make certain points. The introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in the UK is a possible reason for dance music shedding a lot of its political slant.

So we blame Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, for making dance music entirely about hedonism and not about activism?

wow, really struck by the extent to which "exploring the secrets of deaf mutes" anticipates the basic sound not only of this album, but of the knife in general. also seems to point towards boards of canada's geogaddi (since that's been discussed recently). and i can certainly connect the speedy j track to "full of fire".

thing is, echoing what i said earlier, it's fairly easy for me to see the skinny puppy, severed heads and speedy j tracks existing in some kind of functional context where they more-or-less square with user needs. the former belong to industrial-goth nighclub spaces (or dorm rooms) in which nocturnal menace, urban alienation and harsh beats help build an appropriately morbid atmosphere. the latter is straight dance music (same goes for peak experience, tresor). these tracks & sounds have a comprehensible place & purpose. it's harder to slot shaking the habitual into an existing "use profile" or w/e.

Again, my point is maybe .5% "Ho hum it's all been done before" and 99.5% "look at all of these disparate sources they've pulled together in making this awesome album"

I am not at all try to diminish or pooh-pooh The Knife'd creativity; I'm trying to recreate the context from which I'm approaching this album and share it with others, hopefully giving another avenue/dimension for people to explore plus perhaps revive some interest for old faves of mine.

xxpost to Sick Mouthy - IMO it's not so much about the acts, more to do with a number of factors making dance culture more acceptable. By making raves illegal, dance music's milieu moved from suburban fields and inner-city warehouses into commercially-run clubbing environments. Going clubbing was hedonistic, but not necessarily rebellious. It's also to do with dance music becoming accepted by the indie and mainstream media as an auteur art-form with 'proper' albums rather than a throwaway fad. Dance music simply became assimilated by society, permeating the pop charts, being used in TV adverts etc. It just wasn't this edgy new youth-corrupting sound any more. Also - by the time Britpop and Girl Power rolled round, there was a general mistrust of agit-prop in cultural media. Soapboxing was seen as the pursuit of crustie swamp-dwelling dullards with stuff like PWEI and Levellers being branded deeply unfashionable. Think this all had a big knock-on effect for politics in electronic music.

looking forward to checking all these tracks out btw DJP - maybe a Spotify playlist / own thread could be in order?

so the live show is proving divisive...

Saw a clip on pitchfork before the record company took it down. Seemed a bit more like a dance recital than a traditional concert.

so spotify has the whole record now

so the live show is proving divisive...

― Number None, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 11:20 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's certainly been interesting to read the comments on it over the last few days... loads of people complaining about being "ripped off", but also just as many throwing phrases around such as "artistic statement". If The Knife deliberately set out to confound, then it's certainly worked!

spoilers ahead

great things about the live show

- they start with 'A Cherry On Top' and 'Raging Lung', both sound great and it seems at this point a full ensemble is on stage performing the songs
- the remixed version of Got 2 Let U with a new skippy House tempo (makes up for the otherwise baffling inclusion of this song in the set)
- a few other amazing sonic bits here and there as to be expected including the music just after the show finale threatening to turn into a Knife rework of Pon De Floor
- version of 'Silent Shout' very good but undermined slightly by...

bad things about the live show

- ...K & O seemingly only present on stage for around half the set at best, leaving much of it to the dance troupe, backing tracks and lip-syncing and all
- LOTS of very obvious popular songs you would expect them to play from the back catalogue not in the set list
- pretty much everything else

looking forward to reading what the London gig-goers make of the show tonight. can't ever recall seeing such a high level of complaints from fans on a band's own Facebook pages etc. genuine heartbroken outrage and ranting left right and centre.

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

So what's the deal with these shows? They look pretty fun from the shaky YouTube clips I've seen

I am so bummed I didn't get to see them last night in Amsterdam, show was sold out in seconds.

It's been an extremely divisive gig, reading the reviews and twitter etc. Perhaps the most divisive one in a decade. I can't remember fans of a group being so divided into those who are repulsed and those who are full of admiration.

Going off twitter, London's show tonight has the same outcome.

A 20 minute aerobics warm-up, *nothing* sung live, the band leaving the stage for a whole song, theatre.. It must have been really something.

It all sounds like this century's Rite of Spring!