Karin Dreijer of the band The Knife performs during the 2006 CMJ Music Marathon on Nov. 1, 2006 in New York City.
It’s been seven years since The Knife’s last album and a newly released video suggests it’s been well worth the wait.
The Swedish techno-pop duo, composed of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer, found fame in 2003 with their Grammy-winning album Deep Cuts. (The album’s song “Heartbeats” was covered by singer Jose Gonzalez and featured in a Sony commercial.) They followed up with 2006’s Silent Shout, which was critically praised, and many have been eagerly awaiting The Knife’s fourth studio album since.
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Fans were briefly treated last week to a leaked portion of a track from the group’s upcoming album Shaking the Habitual, out on April 9. Though it wasn’t long before the song, called “Full Of Fire,” was pulled, listeners were graced with just enough time to get reacquainted with The Knife’s ominously layered techno and singer Dreijer Andersson’s disjointed vocals.
On Monday, the track in its nine-minute entirety was officially released, along with a mind-blowing video worthy of the song’s unpredictable and sinister-sounding synths. Accurately billed as a short film, the video was directed by Marit Östberg, a Swedish visual artist based in Berlin, and touches on everything from domestic tension to gender-bending bondage to Occupy protests. Essentially, it’s as unpredictable and darkly unsettling as The Knife’s track itself. Describing the film on the group’s site, Östberg writes:
“Who takes care of our stories when the big history, written by straight rich white men, erase the complexity of human’s lives, desires and conditions? The film ‘Full of Fire’ consists of a network of fates, fears, cravings, longings, losses, and promises. Fates that at first sight seem isolated from each other, but if we pay attention, we can see that everything essentially moves into each other. Our lives are intertwined and our eyes on each other, our sounds and smells, mean something. Our actions create reality, we create each other. We are never faceless, not even in the most grey anonymous streets of the city. We will never stop being responsible, being extensions, of one another. We will never stop longing for each other, and for something else.”
While it may be true that universal longing never ends, “Full Of Fire” has surely eased the yearning felt by The Knife’s fans.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoH6k6eIUS4]
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