join me in anticipating musics by FEVER RAY (aka one half of the knife)

if anything i'd say that they're all epiphenomena of some small or large shift in sexuality and the availability of kink material - so e.l. james writing bdsm twilight fanfic circa 2010 (?) is a symptom of something, and so is the formation of some local links (facilitated by the internet) between segments of queer/trans activist communities and young and politically-minded kinky weirdos with art-nerd affiliations. etc.

I am not arguing that 50 Shades influenced Shaking the Habitual; I'm pointing out that it's factually incorrect to say "Full of Fire" came out first.

you're right of course. I was thinking of the movie from 2015, but whatever influence it had, it's in a different universe than videos from The Knife or FKA twigs

Wasn't saying that. Just noting that though kink has been around as a subculture since at least the 50s-60s, there seems to be a small wave of female musicians embracing its imagery. Janet Jackson delved in 1997 on The Velvet Rope, and many wore fetish inspired fashion, but a kink model was way more likely to titilate on album covers by male rockers.

uh...Madonna?

ahhh I read you now DJP, sorry

and yes - madonna! also aguilera and lady gaga who might be the most immediately relevant figures if we do want to turn to mainstream pop that was on the charts during these artists' teens and twenties. the interest in escaping, transforming, or radically reinventing the body's sexuality/sexualization through costume and videography, strikes me as very gaga.

(here i'm looking more to the gender presentation and facial expressions/makeup and stuff in the fever ray, more than the watersports and food tray stuff. though the food tray now is reminding me of that awful katy perry video from a minute ago. ugh.)

Fetish inspired fashion, aping dominatrixes. Twigs got tied up, St. Vincent's cover is an ass in vinyl, Karin (or her proxy) is pissed on from an off camera gooseneck kettle.

nitpicking at this point but only one out of three of those things is anything like a dominatrix

That's my point. Madonna and Gaga weren't playing subs.

Female artist: makes horror sci-fi video featuring themes re-animation, exploitation, ghastly overconsumption, being simultaneously infantilised and objectified and being kept in bondage by the things you are consuming, and being fed and kept alive by the same weird hyper-plugged-in system that repeatedly pisses in your face.

ILX consensus: this is definitely a direct statement about this artist's actual kinky sexual preferences and availability, and not at all a metaphor, or a science fiction story in line with the other repeated political themes of this artist's work.

Not sure where you got that from our discussion.

Branwell, that's not what I saw myself as doing, but reading back over my posts, I can see where you'd get that. Anyway, I should probably tighten up this analysis a bit before spamming threads about artists whose work I really don't know at all. I also imagine there's more to say about the song itself!

Okay! Album's out tomorrow. Enjoy some PR:

Tomorrow, Fever Ray will release a new album, Plunge, the first release in eight years since the celebrated self-titled debut in 2009.

Plunge was largely recorded in Karin Dreijer’s Stockholm studio in collaboration with the producers Paula Temple, Deena Abdelwahed, NÍDIA, Tami T, Peder Mannerfelt and Johannes Berglund.

Karin Dreijer is one half of the electronic duo The Knife along with her brother, Olof Dreijer.

Plunge will be released on vinyl and CD formats on February 23, 2018 via Mute and Rabid Records. Preorder here.

Fever Ray will embark on a live tour in 2018.

Plunge Tracklist and Credits

1. Wanna Sip
Written by Karin Dreijer and Peder Mannerfelt. Produced by Peder Mannerfelt and Karin Dreijer.

2. Mustn't Hurry
Written by Karin Dreijer. Flutes by Aldo Arechar. Produced by Paula Temple, Johannes Berglund and Karin Dreijer.

3. A Part Of Us
Written by Karin Dreijer and Tami T. Produced by Tami T, Peder Mannerfelt and Karin Dreijer. Additional production by Johannes Berglund.

4. Falling
Written by Karin Dreijer. Produced by Peder Mannerfelt and Karin Dreijer.

5. IDK About You
Written by Karin Dreijer. Produced by NÍDIA and Karin Dreijer. Additional production by Johannes Berglund.

6. This Country
Written by Karin Dreijer. Produced by Peder Mannerfelt and Karin Dreijer.

7. Plunge
Written by Karin Dreijer. Produced by Peder Mannerfelt and Karin Dreijer.

8. To The Moon And Back
Written by Karin Dreijer. Produced by Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt and Karin Dreijer.

9. Red Trails
Written by Karin Dreijer. Violin by Sara Parkman. Produced by Paula Temple and Johannes Berglund.

10. An Itch
Written by Karin Dreijer. Produced by Deena Abdelwahed, Peder Mannerfelt and Karin Dreijer.

11. Mama's Hand
Written by Karin Dreijer. Produced by Paula Temple and Johannes Berglund.

Mixed by Johannes Berglund.
Mastered by Mandy Parnell at Black Saloon Studios.

The decision to fall is harder than the fall itself
It is a joy to meet you. I don’t know how to feel about that. But already my repetitions are beginning. Do I confuse itch and ache? Here’s this helpful quiz to discover which it is, dedicated to a global team of heartbroken self-diagnosers that stretches from the threadbare social democracies in the north to the liberated markets in the west. The object of the song is love and the subject of the song is loss, or object and subject are genetically alike. This is how it sounds, the excavated voice, the archaeological dig one thousand or eight years into the future, when the bodies preserved in this auditory mud have become exemplary of their time and can no longer hurt or help each other. Then I will know how to love you and be loved by you.

The song, the lover, is interested in objectifying itself, herself. The lover objectifies herself as music. The song is a prosthesis that extends like a limb into the gut and pulls out the half-digested heart, it’s kind of gothic and kind of a shame. I learn gratefully in music that the decision to fall is harder than the fall itself, the anticipation of falling; I’m embarrassed by gravity is what I mean by “I put on weight”. The parent and the lover momentarily blurring, then some kind of travel sickness, and later I am home without remembering what happened. It used to bother me that violence is as intimate as love, but I see that you have resolved that problem by dissolving the two each into the other. Whatever is important to hide must be important. Whatever is important to forget.


Listen! I’m looking for a girl who stands 10 feet tall and has teeth like razors; I’m looking for a girl who could play the bored receptionist in the lobby of the afterlife, crossing the river of forgetting every morning and evening and back into the world of the living, where I will wait with flowers and an assortment of adult toys. Could this be you? I’m looking for a girl to affirm my reality, or cancel it. Me: I am beautifully dressed. I am a reflective surface. I am the president. Welcome to my body, my building, the border. The escalators only go up. You get down again by throwing yourself off the roof. And the song’s refrain there to catch you if you’re lucky. 

Listen! Sex is work, love is work, work is sex, work is love, the magical conversion of “is” given impossible power by its delivery in music. We have travelled together these minutes and years now and I am hopeful that we have finally solved this complicated problem of how to become… Even now at my age, preserved as an example in this perfect slab of ice, can you believe I am still waiting to become real? I had a plan for how sex or at least some kind of heartfelt physical intensity could save us but I threw it off the roof along with the body and it fell into the silence that limns the edge of the song.

Inside the architecture of repetition that constitutes both a song and a life, taken objectively and not subjectively, there are resonances, assurances, bonds and securities. Sex and music stand guard over a shared silence under the noise, either because there is nothing or too much to say. It is still possible to negotiate between pain and pleasure, on the vanishing edges of pain and of pleasure, as if cutting a deal, the best deal, a beautiful deal. There are no simple binaries, and I don’t only mean gender, that’s old news; I mean that I am radiating and obsessed with the daydream hurt that I imagine your voice alone could cause me, now that I live in its zone, and I am too far gone to distinguish between sharpness and softness. 


Baby, I hope one of us will hypnotise the other. Then the one less hypnotised will kill the other. Then after everyone is dead and we establish the scene, the next beginning, ending, beginning, ending. A pattern can only last its own forever and the song on repeat follows me around the city. The heart is the bloodiest organ and its rhythmic pacing and growling troubles the perception like movement at the edge of the vision mistaken for a creature. It is too early to fall in love, but all of history has happened and now there seems to be only the remainder to be arranged and rearranged. “We waited far too long.” It’s OK, everyone is here now.

Flutes by [...]

sold

Fever Ray will embark on a live tour in 2018.

Hell yeah.

Released tomorrow but physical formats only available by feb 2018 :-/

euro: https://rabidrecordsstore.com
usa: mute

"I’m embarrassed by gravity is what I mean by “I put on weight”."

Stealing this.

Very excited!

IDK if I'm surprised or not that Olof didn't have a hand in the production of "To The Moon And Back." It sounds more Knife-like than any other Fever Ray song, with the possible exception of "Dry and Dusty."

btw it did occur to me that in my defense, my reading of the video was somewhat informed by the adjacent hype videos on Fever Ray's FB and website, "Switch Seeks Same" and "A New Friend." the lyrics also culminate in "first i take you then you take me / breathe some life into a fantasy / your lips warm and fuzzy / i want to run my fingers up your pussy." i feel safe thinking that sexuality is at least one of the major themes being put on the table, rather than just window-dressing on a sci-fi/horror story about something else.

Produced by NÍDIA

sold. Nídia é má, Nídia é fudida is the most interesting album to come out of the Luanda house music scene.

Paula Temple and Peder Mannerfelt too!

On Spotify already

First listen suggests her work with Planningtorock has rubbed off on her a bit, especially on 'This Country'

is sounding knife-esque supposed to be odd for a fever ray cut, odd enough to suspect the contributions of her brother? like, the entire first fever ray project sounded very much like the knife -- which was not a surprise in the slightest considering karin is indeed an active creative force in the knife

anyway i really like the single and will definitely be listening to the full-length soon

yeah no offense but this is classic dude-gets-credit-for-all-the-production-ing

Well in interviews she talked about having to learn stuff for the first fever ray. I think he was initially more responsible for the producering. She spoke about not wanting to be reliant on others. I assume with this new One maybe she’s decided she prefers to focus on the songwriting and Co producing and collaborating on the production.

Brilliant album after one listen - especially the opening track, "Red Trails", and "An Itch".

Wasn't that excited by the promo material but the album is great so far.

Good listen.

good time to be alive when there's a new fever ray album

This country makes it hard to fuck

oh wow, it is on Spotify. the last album was one of my favorite albums ever.

This is very good btw.

is sounding knife-esque supposed to be odd for a fever ray cut

I was under the impression the S/T was entirely self-produced so this is all news for me.

The new album is almost entirely great but I am not sure about 'This Country' at all. There's a kind of freewheeling Jlin beat on 'An Itch' that made me think of how awesome a collaboration between those two artists would be.

This does sound different to the others though, the sound palette is similar but only a couple of tracks have that cavernous sense of space that I associate with Silent Shout and the first Fever Ray record. That's as likely to be a mastering issue I guess but you really notice it on 'Red Trails', which really does have that quality and sounds like it could have been on the S/T. 'Mama's Hand' too.

S/T production was C. Berg (who had done a "Like a Pen" remix, and wasn't particularly audible), and Henrik von Sivers and Peder Mannerfelt (who were pretty audible). I rated Mannerfelt's Controllihg Body last year (it featured vocals from Glasser and the feel was not unlike later Andy Stott.

great record, dig every song

this rules (of course)

I am 2 minutes into this and it is glorious

i am about 30 seconds behind you and yessss

I have heard about 30 choppy seconds because the wifi at the place I was yesterday was beyond shitty but those sure were 30 great seconds

Yes, Falling, Yes

switching to headphones

I am glad this isn't simply S/T Part II (which would have been awesome, don't get me wrong)

glad i switched to headphones because i am that kind of nervous person who worries that the neighbor kids will hear me blasting "this country makes it hard to fuck" over and over. i mean they have to learn sometime i guess, but not from me, not today. this is a message i can connect with more directly if it's piped directly into my ears, i think.

"This Country" is the only thing here I'm not wild about so far

I’m disappointed this isn’t s/t part 2. She lost the mystery that made that album special. Never cared for the abrasiveness of the (late period) Knife. But judging from this thread, I’m in the minority

I fucking adore this and I am a little saddened that I can't in good conscience play it for my kids because, while I think they would love it, I also don't want them shouting "I WANT TO RUN MY FINGER UP YOUR PUSSY" at their teachers/random passers-by/my wife/other family members/me.

xp: Given that Fever Ray was already heading in a bombastic direction with the material that came out post S/T, I think this is a great synthesis of that and the sound palettes The Knife played around with on Shaking the Habitual, tied to a songwriting style that evokes both the S/T and The Knife's pre-Silent Shout work.

I’m also disappointed that it’s not s/t 2. The videos for If I Had a Heart and When I Grow Up were my favorite videos that year and the whole album felt too homogenic for me on first listens but eventually became one of my favorites that year.

this is more like silent shout pt2... it is odd that it sounds more like the knife than the knife itself after that album. That said I also love silent shout so it’s just a matter of accepting we might never hear a proper sequel to the s/t and take this for what it is.

idk it feels like a cool synthesis of basically everything Karin's worked on in a nice tidy package, albeit a little crasser than usual