Following a
seven-year hiatus of studio releases, Swedish electronic band The Knife
(comprised of brother-sister duo Karin and Olaf Dreijer) made their comeback in
April this year with their fourth release, Shaking
the Habitual.
In their
breakout album Deep Cuts, the band
utilised 80s-inspired electro-based synth melodies that felt like a natural fit
in your average club scene, whereas the proceeding Silent Shout was slower, morose, and embraced a more chilling,
minimalist dark ambient style. The band progresses even further on Shaking the Habitual, where the duo
fuses these styles from previous releases yet pushes them to extremes in a
rougher, abrasive and experimental fashion. You only have to glance at the
album’s length and the duration of some tracks to get a sense of this – as a
double album, it borders on 100 minutes and contains individual tracks that
last as long as 19 minutes.
However, the
album does gently ease the listener into its experimental side with its first
two tracks, “A Tooth For an Eye” and “Full of Fire”, which are probably the two
most accessible songs. “A Tooth For an Eye” features instrumentation that is
incredibly varied, with a tribal, afrobeat-inspired rhythm to it as well as
pulsating synth beats. Karin Dreijer’s vocal style is reminiscent of her work
on Deep Cuts, with not nearly as much
distortion as there was on Silent Shout,
and I love the way her voice stretches to its limit on parts like “I’m telling storie-ee-ee-ees” and “trust mee-eee-eee-aaa-hhh!” There’s
also an occasional woodwind sound in this track that hangs around, and it’s a
pleasant addition. “A Tooth For an Eye” is almost a near-perfect harmony of the
styles from Deep Cuts & Silent Shout, but with far more
complexity. And like in Deep Cuts,
the opening track gives the listener a sense of the album’s general makeup, but
in Shaking the Habitual, it’s only
the Toothtip of the Eyeberg. (cue a chorus of groans, I know that was bad) The following “Full of
Fire” is a cut that is definitely drawing on some of the synth-heavy elements
from Deep Cuts, but as the upbeat
synths ebb away, the track progresses into an erratic array of
sounds with heavy and distorted electronic noise. But it’s only a taster of
what is to come.
After the
relative normality of the first two tracks, in “A Cherry on Top” the album
descends into a spooky combination of sounds, and creates an atmospheric, dark
ambient feel. The distorted synths that made brief appearances in “Full of
Fire” dominate this track, along with various field recordings that sound
chopped and reversed. After 5 minutes of noise, Karin Dreijer’s slow, haunting
vocals enter, but soon fade away to more ambience and distortion. There’s a
choral vocal track near the end which reminds me of the chanting heard from the
monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey,
albeit edited. “Without You My Life Would Be Boring” is a welcome return to the
varied, organic sound featured on the opening track, featuring tribal drums,
woodwinds and maracas accompanied by unobtrusive, thick synth lines. “Wrap Your
Arms Around Me” uses thudding drums and even more electronic distortion which
envelops the song as it progresses, and Karin Dreijer’s vocals only linger in
the background.
And then the
closer of the album’s first half, “Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized”. At 19
minutes it seems excessive. But it’s an eerie and foreboding ambient track, and
as you listen you can’t help but get this overwhelming sense of dread and
darkness. It’s lifeless yet captivating, creepy as hell, and easily induces
goose bumps. Apparently composed and cut down from hours of sounds recorded in
a boiler room, but there’s little evidence of its origin in the track. I highly
recommend against playing this when driving alone at night, unless you want to
spend nigh on 20 minutes on the verge of paranoia.
“Raging Lung”
continues where the first side’s closer left off, but with an ever so slight
increase in tempo, and aided by more tribal drumming along with Karin Dreijer’s
vocals, which are a relief after 19 minutes of dreary lifelessness. But it
eventually descends back into a dark ambient vibe towards the end, but with
light percussion and soft whispering by Dreijer. The calypso-style beats heard
throughout Deep Cuts make an
understated, brief cameo in this track as well.
“Networking”
contains a bizarre mix of sounds, in combination with a jumpy electronic beat,
along with Karin Dreijer’s vocals that are distorted and looped, and “Stay Out
Here” is another tribal-infused vibe, but with synths, not drums. Dreijer’s
vocals suddenly transform into panting as the track plays, but are warped and
distorted through various stages. Dreijer is also joined on this track by
Shannon Funchess of synth group Light Asylum, whose vocal work adds a dash of
smooth soul, and is oddly suitable and refreshing.
The second
half’s experimental ramble, “Fracking Fluid Injection”, is an eerie composition
with cawing vocals by Karin Dreijer that seem to vary on several registers and
are looped and distorted over a bizarre, scraping metallic sound. Dreijer’s
vocals suddenly become a low moan, then a raspy wail as the track winds down,
and a dull, cumbersome synth sound begins to wallow around. This is easily the
weirdest track on here, and is bound to grate on a few listeners’ ears the
first time around at least.
“Ready to Lose”,
the album’s final track, begins with more tribal-infused synths, followed by
artificial claps and Karin Dreijer’s vocals, which have returned to some
semblance of coherence. Compared to what has come before it, the beat here is
tame yet interesting, and actually serves as a welcome comedown for an album
that has dived within your subconscious and taken you from extremity to
extremity.
As its name
would suggest, Shaking the Habitual challenges
and reconstructs the sounds within in The Knife’s previous efforts. Gone are
the groovy synths that dominated Deep
Cuts, gone is the cohesiveness of Silent
Shout, replaced with sounds that seem hell bent on treading musical ground
that is harsh, haunting and unfortunately irritating at times. People that were
fans of Deep Cuts should approach
this album with a degree of caution, fans of Silent Shout will feel a bit more at home with some of the sounds
here, but I doubt many Knife fans will be ready for tracks like “A Cherry on
Top” or “Fracking Fluid Injection”. I have to admire their bravery in
committing to an album like this though, in an age of popular music where single
albums consisting of 3 or 4 minute tracks are the norm. With this album The
Knife throw those restrictions to the wind, and in the process craft an album
that is indisputably eccentric, yet unforgettable.
B
-Karl
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