the kniφe - shaking the habitual

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.

or they just didn't think it was good performance art.

The funny thing is that the music was may more fun and accessible than the versions on Shaking the Habitual. It was the authenticity/authorship question that got people riled up. I wonder if they'd have been happier with solemn drones as long as Olof was visibly prodding a laptop.

Lex is OTM in this thread.

I'm just sad I didn't get to go :-( Big respect to the Knife for not going down the well-trod path of so many electronic artists who stand on stage twiddling with a few knobs and acting like they're recreating the music live, as would a rock band. Live electronica is such a charade - most of the music is pre-programmed anyway, so why pretend? Play a CD and get a bunch of crazy dancers to jump around, turn it into a party - much more fun and honest. Standing behind a laptop on stage while playing music that quite clearly took hours of slow, meticulous sampling and experimentation just doesn't make sense - it's mapping rock band values onto electronic music, and yet it's been the main way to present live dance acts for years. 90% of the time I'd like to see, for example, an electronic band miming with toy instruments to a backing track than standing stock still behind a bunch of meaningless equipment.

"Music fans who don't get the same transgressive art interpretations of live music as I do are idiots" isn't a very helpful approach, though, is it? I think, by and large, that people are so used to shitty, formulaic iterations of live music that they're not comfortable with anything which steps outside this. Which is sad, obviously, but blaming them for not getting it is harsh and unproductive.

funny thing is with out-and-out dance acts no one complains either - i saw major lazer at the same venue a few days before and apart from dropping a few snippets of well-known anthems into the mix none of the music was being "created" "live" - instead there were dancers, lights, glitter guns, diplo and co embracing superstar dj poses etc - and the crowd were SO into it

sometimes people just need to hear harshness nick. i'm less interested in persuading them to change their minds as in telling them about themselves

I can mainly remember feeling disdain for dance acts who didn't change the records from the recorded ones, when I liked dance music which had a live offering.

"Music fans who don't get the same transgressive art interpretations of live music as I do are idiots" isn't a very helpful approach, though, is it?

They're idiots if they go and see THE KNIFE and then complain about it.

Well, quite.

I definitely prefer the new Major Lazer album to the new Knife album but maybe I'm just superficial that way.

Otherwise it comes down to what Chris Barber used to say; regardless of what music you're into, most people are basically "Max Bygraves fans," i.e. happy to stick with what they already know.

I mean if I went to see the London Symphony Orchestra or I dunno Laura Marling or something and nothing was being played live onstage and it was being obsfuscated with a load of dancers I'd be entitled to be annoyed but really at this point you should be prepared for a Knife gig to be pretty obtuse.

maybe some of them just thought it was shit.

Entirely possible.

it's mapping rock band values onto electronic music

It's the values of ALL non-electronic music, pretty much. I sometimes wonder if certain acts could be more creative with the way they recreate the sound but I doubt most of them are just whacking on a backing tape of the album. Actually it's modern laptop-based indie acts who tend to be the worst for this.

Laura Marling being obfuscated by a load of dancers would improve her music immeasurably.

I definitely prefer the new Major Lazer album to the new Knife album but maybe I'm just superficial that way.

it has its moments for sure but dude from vampire weekend doing jamaican patois is just ;_; ;_; ;_; ;_;

I think also, at this stage, anyone attending a Knife show should have some sort of idea of what they are (or aren't) letting themselves in for. The fact so many people are getting upset about this underlines precisely the Knife's conceptual approach to Shaking The Habitual - redefining definitions, challenging expectations; often to the point that it intimidates those with a more conservative view of how things 'should' be. The whole point of the Knife's steez seems to be: 'how can the world be changed for the better if so many of us feel threatened by anything outside of these set structures and confines. It's not so much criticising them in a 'wake up sheeple' way, so much as leading by example - you CAN have a 20min drone piece on your album, you CAN change the way a live show is presented, and by extension you CAN make a difference to gender perception and political mores if only you accept ideas from outside of these confines.

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