the knife - full of fire

it's been a while now since the knife released their acclaimed album "silent shout", an album which i love with a title track that is one nothing short of brilliant. in these six years they've toured a bit with their live show for "silent shout", karin dreijer went solo as fever ray and recorded an amazing album. olof dreijer has done production & remix work under his own name and put out all sorts of weird and wonderful techno as oni ayhun. together with mount sims and planningtorock they also scored an opera which i have heard pieces of but never bothered to give it a full whirl.

the hype for this song was quite big and journalists and musicenthusiasts didn't know what direction the dreijer siblings was going to take. was it going to follow karin's more dark and atmospheric affairs as fever ray or olof's berlin-esque output? the answer is a bit of both but i hear more of the music from "deep cuts" and the "hannah med h" soundtrack than "silent shout".

right from the getgo it's hard processed tr-808's that does the heavy lifting as the programming is very dancefloordriven. there is subtle levels of distortion floating around the soundscape and you hear it in the highpitched synths and on karin's voice. it is also present on the vicious bass that comes and sweeps in and punches hard in the bottom end. the key work with all of the sounds in this wonderful 9minute track is processing as no sound hasn't been tweeked to points of aural degradation.

i can hear influences from hard contempoary techno such as surgeon's work in the late 90's/early 00's, miami bass and electro and the berghain massive's house and techno sounds. elements are twisted in and out and there is never a sense of loopdriven music but more that things are to happen for that occasion. karin's vocal presence on the track shifts between her usual demeanour and in morphing states where it sounds like björk in one moment and the spaceape at the next blink. at points her voice is processed into haunting elements and it really signals what the track is about.

fucked up sounds for any sane person to make their day worth wile. basically music for all occasions not just for the dancefloor but the city rush and maybe even the countryside. it's downright proper.

buy here (rabid records store)