Rendering 13 (Music)

The article I’m going to discuss is taken from The Guardian and is entitled “The Knife – review.” It was contributed by Dorian Lynskey on 10 May 2013 and considers the Swedish duo's new album Shaking the Habitual.

The author begins by saying that if The Knife’s current mission is to disrupt assumptions, then they’ve managed to do that, for the audience’s reactions are diverse: the people probably expected something like the new album: dense, challenging, more art than pop. However, they were mistaken, as, for example, for one of the songs, Raging Nun, a brightly clad dance troupe is revealed, banging out a chaotic rhythm on glow-in-the-dark percussion, midway between a tribal rite and the communal dance to Abba in Lukas Moodysson's movie Together; and so it proceeds. It’s evident that it isn’t the music that is confrontational, but the concept: the songs force you to question your prejudices about authenticity and live performance. It’s also necessary to note that the vocals are either mimed by different dancers or entirely disembodied, while ample spontaneity in the anarchic choreography, which often resembles a stage invasion, doesn’t present in the music.

To sum it up, the author is obviously in favour of this new group and their new album. From his point of view, The Knife are admired for warping sounds beyond identification and pitchshifting vocals to blur their gender, but one has to get used to their music, for it either leaves people buzzing with the invaluably rare delight, or in some cases provokes outraged disappointment. As for me, I’m a fan of quite another kind of music and wouldn’t be glad to visit such a concert. Yet, it’s clear that there is usually a listener for every song, and the ones of this group are certainly not an exception.