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Shaking the Habitual Review

Release 5th April, 2013
Release 5th April, 2013

In the first album The Knife have released in seven years, Shaking the Habitual is an intensely thematic and serious comment on the world today. The Swedish electro-pop pair have undertaken solo endeavours since 2006, Karin Dreijer Andersson releasing Fever Ray, while her brother Olof Bjorn Dreijer has continued mixing in nightclubs across Europe while releasing four EPs under the alias Oni Ayhun.

Following the history of The Knife’s music, this may seem like an almost obligatory album. Their 2006 release Silent Shout was acclaimed as the darker follow-up to 2003 premier Deep Cuts. Where the electro pop choruses of tracks like Heartbeats and You Take My Breath Away had cafes and bars pumping to blissful beats, the 2006 follow-up was a darker house styled electro, made for moodier locations. Na Na Na and the busier lines of We Share Our Mother’s Health demonstrated the deeper more stylised synth range of the group, and seem to be a progression into this year’s newly released title.

Shaking the Habitual starts with what I consider to be the classic synths soundscape of The Knife. A Tooth for an Eye (6:05) gives off an African feel with pattering drums and tribal high-pitched vocals. This track will no doubt become the second single of the album, after Full of Fire (9:16), having already been paired with a funky film clip and a sellable hook.

The album takes a political turn at this point, Full of Fire based on themes of feminism and gender perception. The track seems to challenge the dominance of the modern man in all societies:

Full of Fire: Single
Full of Fire: Single

“Of all the guys and the signori,
Who will write my story,
Get the picture, they get glory,
Who looks after my story”.

Full of Fire incorporates a resounding baseline, electronic synth effects and murkier strokes. Andersson’s whispering vocals hold intense notes, and the speed of the beat adds urgency to what is becoming a grittier album. There is something creepily sexual in the politically powerful lyrics, further enhancing the challenging identity of the song.

Shaking the Habitual becomes moodier still with back-to-back instrumentals ranging from one minute to 19 minutes in length. The jarring and undiscernible tones of Crake (0:54) kick the audience out of any comfort they may have been feeling, and leads into the 20-minute monster that is Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realised (19:02). This instrumental is a mammoth of a track, reminiscent of a 1970’s Japanese horror film. The title rolls into a crescendo of penetrating high-pitched sounds from a four minute intro, and the song’s placement in the middle of the album seems to be designed as a intermediate point, purposefully halting the listener and forcing them to rethinking the music to come. Old Dreams peaks (if you can call it that?) in a spotty synth drum style that merely adds to the overall industrial feel. This is The Knife at their most intense and experimental.

The Swedish electro duo follows on with an eerie-styled critique of Western life and capitalism. Raging Lung (9:58) is a combination of buzzing kazoo-trumpet elements and soulful Caribbean drum riffs. The lyrics evoke guilt for person listening from the comfort of Western society, the inherent luck of being born in the first world described as a ‘geographical lottery’.

The remainder of the album goes in a more trip-hop direction; darting burst of synth and electronica combined with alien sounding streaks gives of an otherworldly ambience. Lyrics are either indiscernible or completely void in late tracks, the pair of music-makers snaking their way through thick, foreign expanses of sound completely void of exoneration for fans.

The closing track Ready to Lose (4:35) seems to typify the ultimate goal of this musical experiment. The Knife describes western culture as a bloodline of privilege passed through lineage. The artists demand to be separated from the ‘dysfunctional culture’ that has becoming the norm in the global North. The Knife recognise the only way to be separate is to give-up the possessions, both material and cultural, that western society deems important, but which in actual fact subjugate the third world.

This reading of Shaking the Habitual is consistent with the album artwork released online, an ironic yet truthful look at the power wielded by extremely wealthy classes in North America and Western Europe. The comic strip on the artist’s home page details the extreme wealth being used

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in trivial and often evil ways to appear worthy of Western culture. Identical to the album, the comic strip takes aim at international organisations such as Bretton Woods and the UN, as well as climate change, consumerism, gender roles, big banks and the global financial crisis.

There is nothing conforming, comfortable or mainstream about this album. Themes range from gender inequality, cultural homogenisation, consumerism and ignorance of extreme global poverty. Not only are these themes explored through provocative lyrics and song titles (Fracking Fluid Injection (9:54)), they are coupled with obscure and dusky tones. Shaking the Habitual is a futuristic and alien soundscape with a socio-political message. For older Knife fans, you will still get a taste of the classic electro-pop you know and love, but must take it was the rolling, investigational pitches and obvious activism. For those new to The Knife, take this album as a stage in a longer evolution, and consider the group for more then just these 100 minutes.

This album is great background music for training, gaming, inspirational videos, dive bars or Halloween dinner parties. The message IS VERY IMPORTANT, however, as far as the music goes, some tracks may be tough to get through on your morning commute.

6/10

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