CD: The Knife - Shaking the Habitual | reviews, news & interviews
CD: The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
CD: The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
Swedish brother-sister duo make their declaration for the epoch
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Shaking The Habitual’s centrepiece – the seventh of its 14 tracks – is the 19-minute “Old Dreams Waiting to be Realized”. A tone which ebbs in and out, it’s occasionally underpinned by distant rhythmic colour.
Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer – The Knife – issued their last album, Silent Shout, in 2006. It came on the back of José González’s gentle cover of their early song “Heartbeats” becoming ubiquitous via a TV ad for TVs. The release of Shaking the Habitual is accompanied by a cartoon titled Make Extreme Wealth History and a polemic-crammed biography touching on “a blood system promoting biology as destiny; patriarchies that [are] a problem to the Nth degree; hyper-capitalism; [the] homicidal class system; the school system that’s kaput.” In a rare vocal appearance on “Stay Out Here”, Olof Dreijer declares “the Euro falls”. Presumably, the siblings' new album won't be used for any corporate promotion.
Shaking the Habitual begins with “A Tooth for an Eye”, which sets them in familiar territory: misshapen electropop with an exotic edge nodding towards Tin Drum-era Japan and "Games Without Frontiers" by Peter Gabriel. The atmosphere is distant and frosty. “Full of Flre” (sic) takes them into a warehouse for a communion with Marshall Jefferson. Then, what sound like a koto and piano strings being detuned are brought in for “A Cherry on Top”. Progressing with a linearality, each new element follows from those introduced in the preceding compositions. Connections are made by that glacial atmosphere, circular, pattering south-east Asian drums and Karin Dreijer Andersson’s deliberate, treated voice – “Raging Lung” is the album’s closest nexus to her post-2006 work as Fever Ray. By taking it to such extremes, Shaking the Habitual shares a wilfulness with Fleetwood Mac’s similarly overstuffed Tusk.
Watch the video for “A Tooth for an Eye”
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