the kniφe - shaking the habitual

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"

has somebody already posted a link to their "manifesto" here? It's alternately trenchant, incomprehensible, and hilarious

http://poetry.rapgenius.com/The-knife-shaking-the-habitual-manifesto-lyrics

I'm torn between this and Tomorrow's Harvest for album of the year. Might have to flip a coin

xpost Dan S OTM. It's the 'duck's eye' of the album, albeit a very big one. Putting their money where their mouths are I guess.

PS I'm pretty sure it's my AOTY.

Duck's eye?

http://davidlynch.wikia.com/wiki/Eye_Of_The_Duck:About

maybe it's not quite the right analogy, but i think without the drone track, even if it's not your bag, its placement and the very way it challenges conventional album logic (gigantic experimental ambient tracks usually go towards the end) reflects a lot of the themes and philosophies surrounding STH.

wrt "Old Dreams", I am… kind of alarmed that even the tiniest amount of "non-functionality" would cause any, any sort of kerfuffle. Like, I had no idea people were so precious about traditional forms of listenability and playability and track listing, esp. in this case which is miiiiiiles away from anything actually transgressive (i.e. the track is rather good and splits the album neatly in two)

Yeah, I really like it but there was quite a reaction upthread to it and I think that was intentional to some extent. I can't think of many pop records that have a 20 minute ambient noise exercise put slam bang in the middle of the album. It is subversive in its own way, kind of Situationist scheduling or something.

I like the eye of the duck idea.

I can't think of many pop records that have a 20 minute ambient noise exercise put slam bang in the middle of the album.

It's just a 20-minute "Treefingers" imo

if "old dreams..." can even be called a subversion it's a pretty bloody mild one (and also all too easily unsubverted by skipping/deleting)

the album held up but that's nothing to do with that track

It is subversive in its own way, kind of Situationist scheduling or something.

Kind of intrigued as to how shit something would need to be for Dog Latin not to employ that defence wrt this album. The theory doesn't excuse the music at all.

not a fan then Matt?

I heard "Old Dreams..." on college radio over the weekend while driving with friends and it was kind of great. The driver kept wondering if there was something wrong with his mother-in-law's car.

Anyway, as lex said months ago, the album's real failure is "Fracking", that is the only track on this for which I have no headspace

There's a decent chance that this is my album of the year. I'm still kind of disappointed with it though. I don't like it nearly as much as Tomorrow in a Year (almost certainly the album of the decade so far).

Going to the concert with my family. Not sure my parents are aware of what they got into.

How the hell did people get tickets at the venue tonight since the pre-sale is tomorrow and the general sale is Saturday?

Bummed that they don't look to be planning a stop in Texas on their US tour

I said "it's great to see Lady Sovereign is still getting work" but I can't remember if that was here or Facebook ;_;

― Darth Icky (DJP), Friday, 22 March 2013 15:25 (9 months ago) Permalink

nothing like her

This was one of those albums I found it really hard to get *inside*, because the bulk of my listening at that point was done, on spotify, at work. And this is *so* not a "listen to, at work, in the background, while you program" album, in the way that their other albums were able to be relegated to that space. It's one of those albums that if you don't give it your full attention, it won't reveal anything to you, but if you listen to it closely, it will give up all kinds of secrets and rich rewards. It was an album that I had to find the right atmosphere to listen to it in, to get it (that atmosphere was "in my living room, on a stereo (not headphones) while I was drawing." And then, suddenly, it clicked, and I was just astonished at how layered and abstracted it was, and also, how much it sounded *like The Knife*, but the elements of The Knife that you never think of as being "Knife-like" (bcz think of the artists that usually get compared to them) until you hear them isolated.

The other album that was closest to this experience was Dawn Richard's Goldenheart. They sound nothing alike, but the quality of being almost overwhelming because they are too long, too arty, too intense, too complex and layered and full-on - all the things that become *rewarding* about the album when you give the album the time to encounter it on its *own* terms, instead of imposing work listening conditions upon it.

And now I love both of those albums, in a way I'm really glad I gave the time to, otherwise I would have missed something amazing.

yeah you pretty much described the reason why I never managed to get into this - having a new born baby, I just can't seem to find that dedicated listening space anymore, apart from in my car (and for some reason that album never grabbed me while driving)

BB, yeah. I only listen to records-for-fun when I'm cooking and those are the two 2013 records that made me stop and listen and burn something

Listening to both those records really is like, you have to sit, and listen, and pay attention, like listening to an opera. They don't work as background music.

yeah which is why I have listened through each like twice

I am so buying tickets for this, regardless of whether I can go or not