In 2009, The Knife was commissioned by the Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma to provide music for an opera set to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Joining Karin and Olof as collaborators were Mt. Sims and Planningtorock.

Karin: “We were invited by this Danish performance theatre company ​called Hotel Pro Forma ​to make this piece. And we knew it was supposed to be performed in the Danish Royal Opera House in Copenhagen.”

Olof: “The theatre company wanted to make an opera about evolution theory and Darwin ideas. And they asked if we could make music for that. We entered that project thinking, Of course, it’s important to talk about Darwin’s impact on fascism in Europe.​ It is as important as the colonial history of Europe — how Darwin’s ideas were misused to promote fascism. But throughout the project, it became clear that [the theatre company] was not interested in that. They were interested in biology and geology.”

Luckily, Karin and Olof had asked their friends Mt. Sims and Planningtorock to write the opera with them. Together, they wriggled free from conceptual potholes. Instead of bowing to the traditional form’s grandiosity, the collaborators went granular with their sonic palette.

Karin: “You were very into field recordings at this time.”

Olof: “Yes, a short period. Which, actually, I just think is silly. Who gets to say that recording this sound in nature is art? It shows the hierarchy of contemporary art. Not everyone can say that a recording of the wind, or whatever, is art.”

The studio recorded versions of the compositions were released as Tomorrow, In A Year in 2010 by Rabid Records. Now The Knife continues its 20th anniversary celebration as they announce the first-ever vinyl pressing of their work Tomorrow, In A Year.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Intro
A2. Epochs
A3. Geology
A4. Upheaved
A5. Minerals
B1. Ebb Tide Explorer
B2. Variation Of Birds
B3. Letter To Henslow
B4. Schoal Swarm Orchestra
C1. Annie’s Box
C2. Tumult
C3. Colouring Of Pigeons
D1. Seeds
D2. Tomorrow In A Year
D3. The Height Of Summer

The Knife continues their 20th Anniversary celebrations as the duo of Karin and Olof Dreijer present a new violet coloured vinyl pressing of their critically adored third studio album, ‘Silent Shout’.

The Knife reached yet another pinnacle with ‘Silent Shout’. After the effervescent, Eurodisco-tinged pop of their 2003 album, ‘Deep Cuts’, the Dreijers developed a dark parallel world on their 2006 follow-up. With menacing electronics rooted in early techno and identity masking via the art of pitch shifting, The Knife used their platform to subvert institutional structures and challenge social norms. They were a band with something to say and people were listening.

For all its clean air, the isolated community they were raised in was suffocatingly patriarchal. The weight of gendered expectations almost too much to bear. In that context, ‘Silent Shout’ is a protest album of sorts. Songs like ‘Forest Families’ and ‘One Hit’ gnash their teeth at the pressure that sexism, homophobia and capitalism exert. The album’s sometimes eerie interpretation of 90s techno and trance - a formative era for both siblings - proved the perfect foil for the stinging social realism of its song lyrics.

While there had always been at least a year-long delay between the Swedish and international releases of their previous albums, ‘Silent Shout’ was released everywhere at once. And, for the first time, they took their music on tour. On stage, they wore black pantyhose over their heads daubed with UV paint. For interviews, they used their bird masks and altered their voices any time they were on video. They became famous for not wanting to be famous.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: If Deep Cuts delivered technicolour tropical pop with a naive exuberance, "Silent Shout" was its moody teenage sibling. Dark, shadowy and at times stomping. The opener is a Scando-tech bomb I have never fallen out of love with, lead single "We Share Our Mothers' Health" is a masterpiece in pitch shifted mind melt, and the rest of the tracklist is littered with jams (Marble House, Na Na Na and Like a Pen anyone?)

TRACK LISTING

Silent Shout
Neverland
The Captain
We Share Our Mothers’ Health
Na Na Na
Marble House
Like A Pen
From Off To On
Forest Families
One Hit
Still Light

Nick The Knife re-established Nick as a solo artist after Rockpiles final album (and the only one issued under the groups name!) Seconds of Pleasure.

The release comes with 3 previously unavailable tracks that featured on both the CD and the bonus 7” single that comes with the LP.

Rockpiles Terry Williams and Billy Bremner made contributions, but Nick also transitioned towards his new band Noise to Go by bringing back old friend Bobby Irwin, introducing bassist James Eller and Paul Carrack.

The album features Nicks version of Heart (Bremner had sung it on the Rockpile album) as well as an eclectic survey of pop music styles from power pop to doo-wop. My Heart Hurts, penned with then-wife Carlene Carter, was the lead single. This reissue includes demo versions of Heart and Raining, Raining as well as the rarity (recorded around the same time) I Got a Job.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Nick's first album after Rockpile split up features the excellent "Too Many Teardrops".

TRACK LISTING

Burning
Heart
Stick It Where The Sun Don't Shine
Queen Of Sheba
My Heart Hurts
Couldn't Love You(any More Than I Do)
Let Me Kiss Ya
Too Many Teardrops
Ba Doom
Raining Raining
One's Too Many (And A Hundred Ain't Enough)
Zulu Kiss
Heart (Demo) (Bonus Track)
Raining Raining (Demo) (Bonus Track)
I Got A Job (Bonus Track)

Cut The With The Cake Knife was recorded by Rose McDowall in 1988/89 following the break up of her group Strawberry Switchblade. Produced with the aid of several musicians in several studios, the album features songs written for the fabled second Strawberry Switchblade album. More importantly perhaps it showcases the honest, direct and life-affirming songs of one of the greatest unsung songwriters of the modern pop era at a tumultuous time in her career.

Tibet opens the set and could be one of the best pop songs you’ve never heard. The innate sadness of the songs’ content – the loss of a friendship, impending sorrow – is heightened to heart-melting level by McDowall’s pop nous and melodic sensibility. Choruses and hooks are everywhere on Cake Knife, from the outsider take on stadium 80s pop in Wings Of Heaven to the spiraling, ecstatic So Vicious, a glorious anthem that highlights the human fragility in McDowall’s vocal performance, an instrument that has never lost the naïve purity it first exemplified in Strawberry Switchblade’s early 80s recordings. The centerpiece of the album, the title-track, is the greatest Switchblade pop chart hit that never was. Like the veiled melancholy of her former group’s hits, Cut With The Cake Knife hints at a darkness beneath the gloss, a darkness that saw McDowall delve into more esoteric territory with her subsequent recordings and collaborations. Cut With The Cake Knife serves as the bridge between the pop music McDowall had been making with her friends Jill Bryson, Lawrence from Felt and Primal Scream to what became a more extreme, deep sound informed by neo-folk and post industrial music.

Rose McDowall’s role in the canon has always been one of an outsider. Beginning in Glasgow’s East End in the avant proto-noise group The Poems, achieving fame briefly in the 80s and then disappearing into counter-cultural folklore, the emphasis in the internet-age has been skewed towards her image and cultural significance. Unseen to many, her solo work, her groups Sorrow and Spell and her collaborations with a whole host of underground luminaries have still touched lives. As McDowall elucidates: “They're real sad songs, about real life. I've had people come up to me to say I'd connected with them and helped them. I remember a gig in America when we made a whole room cry. It was bizarre. A couple at the front of the stage started crying and then these two boys beside and suddenly everyone was crying. And I thought, "that's power."

Night School’s issue of Cut With The Cake Knife includes unpublished photographs, extensive sleeve notes from Rose McDowall and 2 bonus tracks culled from the bootleg 7” “Don’t Fear The Reaper.”