The Knife is an electronic duo from Stockholm, Sweden formed in 1999. The band consists of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson (formerly of Honey is Cool, now Fever Ray) and Olof Dreijer - who also run their own record company, Rabid Records.
One of the group’s distinguishing characteristics is their unwillingness to cooperate with the media or the mainstream music scene - they rarely give interviews and wear animal masks in public; they continue to challenge song conventions and make some extremely fine/incredibly fucked up pop music. Which for me, is really the best kind of pop music there is. In 2006, they released Silent Shout, which is easily one of the best albums of the decade. Electronic pop was no longer a light headed bouncy affair for the Anderssons, it now existed to inhabit the recesses of your mind, in a world of its own.
An insight on this masterpiece from a fellow rymer:
Forget electroclash. Forget dance-punk. Forget all the other 80s electronic and dance revivalist bands of the 2000s; Silent Shout is the definitive back-to-basics electronic album of the decade. A decisively determined album, it focuses on its goals without making any concessions, and thus Silent Shout produces no pop gems in the vein of "Heartbeats," but what replaces the style that the band previously explored is no less engrossing. It's got everything necessary to make it a classic: The haunting, unique vocals, icy electronics, danceable neck-breakers ("We Share Our Mothers Health" is a rare track that might actually be physically dangerous), melodic burns and dark mystique. Silent Shout both sounds like something completely new and futuristic and yet also somehow antiquated; "The Captain" is a perfect example, sleek and yet frozen, smooth and yet rough as if coated in brine. It only further emphasizes the fact that the album doesn't quite fit in with anything else of its age, even consciously nostalgic dance music that dominated much of the decades independent scene. If it recalls anything, it's an alternate reality of the 80s when Antarctica had a thriving electronic scene, but it also sounds cutting edge and advanced. Perhaps this is what makes Silent Shout so timeless; ultimately, it is an album that seems to resound from nowhere, and thus answers to no one, nothing.
a cracked smile and a silent shout..
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