The Knife is a cult Synthpop duo from Sweden, and they came up with the idea of making a modern Opera about Charles Darwin (yep...Charles Darwin), and this sort of crazy ideas come all the time from places we never expect (like an album about Imelda Marcos), and sometimes this crazy ideas make a lot of sense when they come to life and sometimes they don't.
In the case of The Knife, to develop the concept they teamed up with German DJ/Producer/Artist/musician Matthew Sims, also known as Mount Sims or Mt. Sims and also German multiinstrumentalist/Record Label Owner/Video Maker/Producer/Conceptual/Artist/Musician Janine Rostron, also known with the stage name Planningtorock.
This team up sounded very interesting, being Planningtorock an audiovisual concept of glam rock and classical music with strange experimental dashes of Hip-Hop. And Mt. Sims well known in the European club scene and the cherry on top being The Knife, also an audio visual concept of brother and sister Olof and Karin Dreijer, that have made the classical album Deep Cuts being every kind of music put together in an album and making absolute sense, and the rest of the too perfect discography they have delivered, counting the classic collaborations of Karin Dreijer Andersson with Röyksopp and her solo project Fever Ray.
The album is a conceptual opera base on the Charles Darwin "On the Origin of Species" and was made for the Hotel Pro Forma performance group; since it was an Opera they also have guest appearance of mezzo-soprano Kristina Wahlin.
They also leaked on the internet two amazing songs of the project: Colouring of Pigeons and Annie's Box. Two amazing masterpieces that made the waiting for the album something almost impossible.
Sadly once it came out, the tracks in this album are just noise, and don't have much sense to me, kind of like what happened with the Drawing Restrain 9 of Björk. I'm sitting listening to the LP and hoping someone please stop the madness. I don't see any of the collaborators shine in this LP, just in the two songs they leaked; the whole LP is just sad and noisy and I don't understand anything. Hope in the opera makes a little bit more sense with the actors and the dancers, but alone, makes absolutely no sconce to me.
It gets better in the end, but quite frankly, is not an LP that will deliver if you have high expectations and its hard not to because of all the people involved, this LP is made for an specific thing (the Opera) and listen to it alone, without the theatre and the visual reference maybe doesn't make a lot of sense.
Even though, Annie's Box and Colouring Pigeons are two of the most amazing songs of 2010, even if the album didn't work, but hear it for yourself and see what you think.
1. Intro
2. Epochs
3. Geology
4. Upheaved
5. Ebb Tide Explorer
6. Variation of Birds
7. Variation of Birds
8. Letter to Henslow
9. Schoal Swarm Orchestra
10. Annie's Box
11. Tumult
12. Colouring of Pigeons
13. Seeds
14. Tomorrow in a Year
15. The Height of Summer
16. Annie's Box (alt. vocal)
Rate: 4/10
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