The Knife...
THE KNIFETOMORROW, IN A YEARThe Knife, Mt. Sims and Planningtorock invite us to accompany them into a terribly terrestrial and completely disconcerting space opera. Their common itinerary? The life of our old pal, Charles Darwin. 2010: A Species Odyssey.First ContactAnyone who expected a sequel to The Knife’s last album, Silent Shout, may be bewildered, or indeed disappointed. It’s a 180° turn-around, gazing in the opposite direction — off into space. No more “Heartbeats” pop melody; instead it’s an opening onto the interstellar world of the palpable. Here we rub shoulders with all life forms — past, present and future. In total weightlessness, tugged between the aurora borealis, pigeons, the sound of the wind and the smallest pebble. Completely held in thrall by Kristina Wahlin’s voice, we drift off, without the slightest concern about our destination. We float by Kubrick’s monolith and confer with forest animals.The album seems to escape time; Socrates could have listened to it as easily as Korben Dallas. Textures stretch out, tear; we have no reference point. Gods seem to touch humans, the two universes connected by a luminous ectoplasm. And then comes the evolution of the species. Darwin’s theory is sublimated, put forward, extrapolated, studied, exploded. We move into a world that’s no longer really real. The astral fetus is about to be born, consciousness stretches out. From this point on, no world can resist our force ever again. We are the composite of all entities, in osmosis with the earth and the universe.Tomorrow, In A Year wears it’s name well. This 1-hour-37-second aural experience is a window onto the world — or rather the universe of tomorrow or even the day after tomorrow. We’ve just passed Jupiter, the first disc ends in an astral breath that segues into an intermission, before plunging into the second part of the album.The Colouring of PigeonsNow it’s time for the main event. Available for free listening on the band’s website, “Colouring of Pigeons” is an 11-minute-1-second statement. It begins with the dawn of humanity, with tribal percussion and Kristina Wahlin’s ever-present voice performing an opera for primitive Man. Her onomatopoeias gradually lift us up; monkey becomes Man, and he levitates. Jonathan Johansson and Lærke Winther enter and join in the dance. Then all three begin to speak, explaining the world and its makeup to us. We even witness the birth of the first pigeon. Statuesque and celestial. He reveals himself to be a quasi-deity — omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient.The piece ends, once again in a shrill breath — the end of the world, the pigeon takes flight, merging with ancient mythology, to flourish and become the last living being in the galaxy. All we can do is erect statues in its effigy that will traverse the ages.The Cosmos and Beyond…?The second disc continues but begins to run out of steam a bit. If at first we were blown away by each track, now we slip into redundancy, repeated rhythms. We abandon ourselves, lulled by more trivial melodies. We’re reaching the end of our journey, everyone’s tired and Morpheus guides us to our final destination. Fortunately, Kristina Wahlin’s voice returns to keep us afloat, then segues into the last track on the album, which harkens back to earlier Knife productions. As we feel ourselves floating back to earth, we become human again and the statues of pigeons we erected just moments earlier begin to fade from our memory.The Knife’s fourth album, in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, Tomorrow, In A Year is surprising. This kind of risk-taking and subject matter certainly won’t draw a mass audience, but you can’t accuse the band of not trying something new or of not being full of surprises. Bon voyage!popo el sangre
gloria pedemonte
reiko underwater
