the kniφe - shaking the habitual

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!

If you don't go in with the expectations of watching a band play live, then it's OK. Having read the comments about the tour so far, I had pretty low expectations.

Couldn't see much of the dancing on stage, but I can sort of see their point. A lot of this album couldn't have been performed live anyway, so I sort of see the band's point in not even pretending to play and just dance on stage instead. Which would have been great if everyone in the audience could actually see what's going on onstage (the Roundhouse is awful for this).

It would have been awesome in a venue where the stage isn't the focal point of the room. Imagine if it was some club where there are dancers everywhere and the audience are just there to dance and have fun. But in a normal venue where everyone expects to look at the front, it just didn't quite work.

I say fair play to em, but then I didn't get tickets on time

I mean, what would you rather see: a bunch of people losing it on stage with a cool light show and wicked music or two people standing stock still behind keyboards duly going through half-rendered versions of the album tracks? Shaking the Habitual, to me, is Dada-esque in its use of artFORM as anarchy - presenting itself in ways that are structurally different from how we have come to expect and accept. The whole thing is about challenging tropes. Kind of reminds me of an idea for a gig I wanted to do where the audience is handed a church-service style pamphlet with the proceedings of the night laid out; the set list, lyrics, whether there would be a break for audience banter, whether there would be an encore etc.... People don't expect to be given the running order when they go to concerts, but they do when they go to church which is strange because to an alien the two activities are extremely similar.

I totally agree (and also was too late for tickets). In form it is definitely dada-esque, and I noticed I have missed artists that do this, confuse and harshly break through conventions.

I have noticed they have made a conscious decision to separate the 'message' of the album - which is a strong one, even if I haven't fully figured it out yet - from the shows. They use the interviews for the political side of their music, the gender-issues, but they use their shows to disrupt. Both are equally anarchist and militant, but I think it is a very clever strategy.

Think I just missed music challenging me so much. I find the new album breathtaking, annoying, painstaking and beatiful, sometimes all at the same time. I embrace the confusion.

It would have be awesome if their gig was more like that Neon Neon Praxis Makes Perfect gig or immersive theatre thing. For Full of Fire the band and dancers stood still on stage in hooded tops. If you had wandered across them during the song, it would have been terrifying. But it just didn't quite work in a venue like the Roundhouse.

terrific show. terrific concept and execution (although jill's caveat about sightlines is otm). i liked the displacement of focus away from she & he, the deliberate disruption of the cult-of-personality that gigs sometimes represent. i don't know why people are so invested in seeing The Band perform The Hits, especially with music that isn't going to be created live in front of you regardless of whether karin and olof are on stage or not. compared to the last knife show i saw, circa silent shout, where they did just that, this was so much more unpredictable and dynamic.

also i do wonder, who exactly did the whingers think they were going to see? this was not exactly out of character. anyone who was "heartbroken" about that gig needs to have a word with themselves.

"lip-syncing" doesn't even half cover it, either. at points you had six dancers, all with mics, all lip-syncing, one of whom may or may not have been karin. 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

Are you writing a review for the Graun about it Lex?

nah if i was i'd be doing it now, not on the internet!

however i will be talking to them tomorrow about it.

this new knife codswallop sounds like pretentious, overrated rubbish IMHO

regards,
nilmar

have you listened to it?

many people consider listening to a record an important part of evaluating it

xxp Lex, yeah makes sense.

Enjoy the interview! Dutch online mag got a great interview out of them. It went from gender politics to music, from expectations of the crowd to Olof being a bigger feminist than Karin, from penetration being unnecesary and overrated to inserting a bludgeon with a condom around it!

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

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, May 8, 2013 8:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

thats awesome

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.

i'm reading these now and my gawwwwwd, people's sense of entitlement to this rigid idea of what they expect a gig to be. is this a recent development? when i started going to gigs, NO WAY did i expect to hear certain songs, and i never got the impression anyone else did. you are paying to hear LIVE ART which is (or should be) inherently unpredictable. (related: i think the entire concept of don't look back concerts is contemptible.)

and really i say "what kind of band did you think the knife were" but if BRITNEY FUCKING SPEARS decided to come out and on a whim perform a setlist entirely composed of her deep cuts that is HER PREROGATIVE. (and i'd fucking love it, she has enough quality deep cuts.) you purchase a ticket, not a right to dictate the setlist.

i might now spend the next hour thinking about my dream #deepbritneyalbumcuts setlist

Um, I think millions would disagree, Lex.

about what? britney? or entitlement to The Hits? they'd be completely deluded and wrong on both counts.

Which is to say, that going to see "live art" as you put it, is fine and dandy (and I have done this many times), and you should be prepared for what's going to happen (or not happen, as far as rote expectations go), but a ticket to a gig is a contract between a performer and the audience, and the audience will have certain expectations of what that contract means; if they're not met for whatever reason, then yeah, you're entitled to feel pissed off. You've been mis-sold a service / experience. I've seen Swans and The Necks recently, and if they're sets had been predictable I'd have been disappointed; if MBV's had been unpredictable - no Soon, no Only Shallow, no YMMR - I'd have felt cheated, because the experience of those songs were an integral part of what I was buying into. In The Knife's case I think what they're doing now sounds awesome, and I'd love to have seen it and I doubt I'd complain, but there's clearly a portion of their audience who haven't bought in to what they're doing right now, for whatever reason; it may be confused lines of communication, or it may be that they're boring, reactive dicks. But if you're going to present a version of live music, as an ostensibly pop performer, which veers radically away from (indeed, shakes) the usual habits of performativity, then your audience needs to know that, and be expecting it.

reminds me slightly of the lauryn hill tour last year when she did do the hits, but with completely different arrangements such that many of them were nigh-on unrecognisable. moan moan moan, whinge whinge whinge, it's like all they wanted was a bit of a nostalgic singalong

a ticket to a gig is a contract between a performer and the audience, and the audience will have certain expectations of what that contract means

this should extend to standards of professionalism, sure - a dj who's too pissed to mix properly or a singer who can't remember their words. (cat power fans may disagree.) but not to the actual detail of what the show consists of. when you buy a ticket to an artistic event, whether that's (pop) music or theatre or film, you're taking a risk as to whether it's to your taste, that's inherent. that's especially the case when the performer presents themselves as avant-garde, which the knife do pretty explicitly (even heavy-handedly).

a ticket to a gig is a contract between a performer and the audience, and the audience will have certain expectations of what that contract means; if they're not met for whatever reason, then yeah, you're entitled to feel pissed off

bollocks to this imo. the only thing you should judge the gig on is whether or not the actual content and presentation of it moved you. you might feel disappointed by certain songs being excluded, but that has only a tangential relationship with the performance itself. i'm sure lots of people would disagree, i say shame on these judas-shouting motherfuckers.

PREACH

It might only have a tangential relationship with the performance, but it wont be tangential at all to your experience of the performance, if you're desperate for a specific song or songs that you expect to hear and then don't.

hmm if you're desperate enough to hear a particular song that your enjoyment of a show hinges on it, i wouldn't say the risk/reward ratio of buying a ticket is particularly great, and you should probably just...play that song at home

Because that's analogous to the euphoria of experiencing it at great volume in a crowd of like-minded people.

to an extent whether they play The Hits or not is a bit of a red herring as it's only a small part of why the knife's show was divisive - it was the nature of the presentation more than the material they chose. but there's still this sense of entitlement and unwillingness to be surprised in people's complaints.

Because that's analogous to the euphoria of experiencing it at great volume in a crowd of like-minded people.

obviously it's not, but this is not what your ticket is buying.

I don't see how it's an entitlement to expect that if I attend a show, the artists will perform their hits or at the very least some songs that their fanbase are familiar with in a form that is recognizable to those fans. Theoretically, the reason I'm there is because you've sold me on the quality of those songs as they appear on your album or whatever and I want to see them in a live setting and the artist knows that's why I'm there. That's how they've drawn me in. This expectation can vary depending on the artists work and the feasibility of performing those songs live in a way that's engaging of course, but there's at least some expectation of what you'll play and how it will be played. Obviously payment for admission doesn't allow attendees to dictate the entire setlist, but c'mon, no one is buying a ticket to the Femme Fatale Tour to watch Britney perform to a setlist composed of ragtime interpretations of Baby One More Time album deepcuts and some would be rightly pissed if that's what they got.

no one is buying a ticket to the Femme Fatale Tour to watch Britney perform to a setlist composed of ragtime interpretations of Baby One More Time album deepcuts

yeah but this would be so awesome

why do you get so few of these complaints w/r/t other art forms? the other week i went to an avant-garde theatrical adaptation of the trial that involved walking by myself through east london, unexpected one-to-one encounters with actors etc - i had no idea what i was letting myself in for, certainly not what i got. (i bought the ticket - actually bought, unlike my knife ticket - on a friend's recommendation, not prior knowledge of the company.) it wasn't a traditional theatre experience by any means, it could well have fallen flat, would i have been within my rights to complain? i don't think so, as i said buying that ticket to an artistic experience was a risk that i would be left cold.

People don't think of pop as art, Lex.

Not saying that's right or wrong.

I'm sympathetic to the "I got a babysitter for THIS?" response to an unpredictable show. Sometimes you're forewarned: I don't go to see Wire because I mainly want to hear songs from the first three albums and I know that's not their deal these days. This was more of a shock but there was enormous pleasure in being made to question your assumptions and let go of them in order to enjoy what was, in its own right, an utterly joyous show. If this weren't billed as a Knife show and was something you stumbled upon late one night in one of Glastonbury's weirder tents then it would be one of the best things you'd see all year. I can understand being annoyed by what it wasn't - The Knife visibly performing their songs — but what it was was exceptional.

Strikes me that the Knife audience should have known exactly what they would be getting, if they had even nodding acquaintance with Shaking The Habitual, i.e. played it once, filed it away and dug out Deep Cuts again.

People don't think of pop as art, Lex.

― they all are afflicted with a sickness of existence (Scik Mouthy), Thursday, May 9, 2013 9:40 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not saying that's right or wrong.

― they all are afflicted with a sickness of existence (Scik Mouthy), Thursday, May 9, 2013 9:40 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, i'm saying that's wrong, and fuck 'em

why do you get so few of these complaints w/r/t other art forms? the other week i went to an avant-garde theatrical adaptation of the trial that involved walking by myself through east london, unexpected one-to-one encounters with actors etc

it is a bit different tho, people have heard the album before seeing a gig and that's their day to day connection with the band, their connection with their music. it's highly possible that people are into music but not particularly into performance or performance art. more's the pity i guess.