I hadn’t never heard much about the Swedish electronic duo The Knife until reviewers of 'The Suburbs' pointed out that Arcade Fire's ‘Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains’ had actually borrowed a lot from The Knife's 2003 ‘Heartbeats’,… I immediately went to YouTube, and yeah, there was an obvious similarity between the songs. So I got interested, plus any band who composes an opera based on Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of the Species’ has to trigger my deepest interest.
A few days ago, the Knife released an intriguing 9-minute track, ‘Full Of Fire’, a first glimpse at their upcoming album ‘Shaking the Habitual’, which promises to be as creepy as long: Long? 13 tracks, making the album last about 100 minutes with even a song reaching 19 minutes! And for the creepiness, just listen to the song below, a stretching avant-garde electronic number installing paranoia and dark thoughts.
First, ‘Full Of Fire’ may sound like a techno party hosted into a torture chamber, these drums are damn sinister, and I got a little scared of Karen Dreijer-Anderson’s freaky-witchy vocals ready to jump at your throat at any moment… then I got into the strange beat without even realizing it,… however, it even got weirder, morphing into an electronica jungle populated by the most unrecognizable and indescribable sounds, some monkey-like cries, discordant synth and submarine drumming. It has to be the music equivalent of abstract painting, but I have to admit it is as hypnotic and fascinating as an unknown and incomprehensible ritual, cold and sensual, foreign and seductive at the same time. I don’t just want to know what is happening to her, did she get swallowed by all this unbelievable craziness?
But seriously, if this song really prefigures ‘Shaking the Habitual’, who will endure 100 minutes of this?
The video has been taken down shortly after it leaked, and according to Spin it was featuring all kinds of weirdos doing crazy stuff: ‘An elderly woman dresses up like a man then goes trolling; a middle-aged woman urinates in the street through her stockings; leather-clad lads in colorful makeup have a tryst; so do some biker girls in bondage; romance emerges between a protesting punk and a member of law enforcement.’
However, the song is still on soundcloud!
Here is 'Shaking the Habitual' tracklist:
01. A Tooth for an Eye (6:04)
02. Full of Fire (9:17)
03. A Cherry on Top (8:43)
04. Without You My Life Would Be Boring (5:14)
05. Wrap Your Arms Around Me (4:36)
06. Crake (0:55)
07. Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized (19:22)
08. Raging Lung (9:58)
09. Networking (6:42)
10. Oryx (0:37)
11. Stay Out Here (10:42)
12. Fracking Fluid Injection (9:54)
13. Ready to Lose (4:36)