6 posts tagged “live”
Man, I lurve these guys. They meet all my requirements for being groupie-worthy:
- Foreign
- Dreamy
- Lyrically deep
Archive has been around (in one form or another) since 1994 (according to wikipedia.com who would NEVER lie to me). They make sweet electronic sounds that range from moody and retrospective to fucking pissed off. Kinda like me. I lurve that, too.
Here they playing live at the Foire du Trône (hope your French ain't rusty) in Paris April 14, 2006. The Foire du Trône is a very popular fair that, according to the google translator, is about Thrones and gingerbread. I think.
The video. Go watch it:
It hurts to feel
It hurts to hear
It hurts to face it
It hurts to hide
It hurts to touch
It hurts to wake up
It hurts to remember
It hurts to hold on
Turn my head
The hurt's relentless
The hurt of emptiness
The hurt of wanting
The hurt of going on
The hurt of missing
The hurt is killing me
Turn my head
Off
Forever
Turn it off
Forever
Off forever
Turn it off forever
Ever blind
I just can't get enough of Karen Dreijer Andersson lately, drawn time and again to her projects The Knife and Fever Ray. There's a sweet spot I'm attracted to, a combination of utter weirdness, electronic tropical beats, and political ball-busting. The Knife's 2007 pre-recorded Swedish Grammy acceptance award video is classic "WTF is this?" behavior.
But you know? I think they've outdone themselves brilliantly this time. The Knife is set to unveil an opera written to celebrate the 150th publishing anniversary of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in September 2009. It'll be at the Royal Danish Theatre, no less. The BIG time people!
The Hotel Pro Form, a Danish performance organization, is producing. From their Web site:
The theatre group Hotel Pro Forma’s (DK) special form of beauty blends with The Knife’s (SE) electronic music and Hiroaki Umedas (JP) hip-hop-inspired choreography to form a new type of electro-opera based on the works of Charles Darwin. An opera singer, a pop singer and an actor singing in the tradition of Brigitte Bardot perform The Knife’s music on stage. Six dancers from ballet and modern dance merge with the singers and the newest technology in light and sound to give us an incredible image of our immense diversity and amazing similarities.
WHO'S GOING WITH ME? This is going to be better than a bajillion SXSWs. Not that I'm still bitter I missed another one. Nope.
One of my favoritest The Knife songs of all the awesomenest ones, "We Share Our Mother's Health" performed LIVE:
In case you missed it, I've previously written about The Knife here, and featured the Fever Ray video "If I Only Had a Heart" here.
We came down from the north
Blue hands and a torch
Red wine and food for free
A possibility
We share our mothers' health
It is what we've been dealt
What's in it for me?
Fine
Then I'll agree
Trees there will be
Apples, fruits maybe
You know what I fear
The end is always near
x2
Say you like it
Say you need it
When you don't
Looking better
Shining brighter
Than you do
x2
This is an amazing song ... don't let the video quality fool ya (the sound is actually very good). It's the lyrics and performance that will get under your skin. If you feel nothing after listening to this tune, you are dead inside. You should see someone about that.
Afraid of an airplane
Of a car swerving in the lane
Of a dark cloud too low
Or being swept away by the undertow
Of a building tumbling down
Of the train when it's underground
Of the icy mountain roads
We have to take to get to the show
There's just a time when we must all let go the breath that we hold
There's just a time when we must all let go the breath that we hold
You know, the unknown we have to let go
Afraid when the phone rings
Another breath of life has ceased
It seems it's just lost so easily
Afraid my heart, it beats too slow
Or that I died and just didn't know
Or of a fate I will have to choose
And I'm afraid of how much I love you
There's just a time when we must all let go the breath that we hold
There's just a time when we must all let go the breath that we hold
You know, the unknown we have to let go
It's just now that I've found a place where I can breathe
It's just now that I've found a place where I can sleep
It's just now that I've found a place where I can breathe
It's just now that I've found a place where I can sleep
Limb by limb and tooth by tooth
Tearing up inside of me
Every day every hour
I wish that I was bullet proof
Wax me
Mould me
Heat the pins and stab them in
You have turned me into this
Just wish that it was bullet proof
So pay the money and take a shotradiohead
Leadfill the hole in me
I could burst a million bubbles
All surrogate and bullet proof
And bullet proof
And bullet proof
And bullet proof
embrasses moi à Paris
sens moi à Rome
fais moi danser à New York City
si t'es un homme
parles moi à Londres
touches moi à Tokyo
je ne veux pas attendre
de tomber de haut
i wanna travel the world (x3) with you
endores moi à Venise
réveilles moi à San Francisco
je suis un peu surprise que le monde est beau
i wanna travel the world (x3) with you
embrasses moi à Paris
sens moi à Rome
fais moi danser à New York City
si t'es un homme
parles moi à Londres
touches moi à Tokyo
je ne veux pas attendre
de tomber de haut
i wanna travel the world (x3) with you
Swedish band The Knife is mediaChick's band of the hour. They play the best electro-pop I've heard in a while, a curious combination of industrial discord, club dance beats, moody vocals, electronic synth beats, and lots of what sounds like a marimba. It works. The first song I heard from this band was "Girls' Night Out" which caught my attention as I was plugging away at work. It's got that combination of the comfortable familiar and "dang, I didn't expect that!" that gets my blood pumping.
Listen to it (click the play button below the big ol' box below) and read this stuff I lifted from Last.FM about The Knife (I cut out the boring parts):
The Knife is an amazingly prolific electronic indie duo from Sweden formed in 1999. The band consists of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson 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. The group rarely makes public appearances, most of their promotional photos feature the members wearing masks, and until recently, they outright refused to perform live concerts. (mediaChick's Note: Here's an interesting tidbit: In their video for "Pass It On" The Knife is portrayed as a blonde drag queen seducing a 20-something doe-eyed boy. When they played "live" recently, the used the same actors to perform that song...the videos are below.) They use venetian masks similar to those that can be seen in the movie Eyes Wide Shut - which had its premiere the same year that The Knife was formed. Recently the group has showed themselves in public wearing masks formed as bird's beaks, similar to those used by medieval doctors. (mediaChick's note: check out the photo below...they also paint themselves up as monkeys, too. Just sticking it to the man, I guess.)
The Knife won a Swedish Grammy award as best pop group of the year 2003, but they boycotted the ceremony by sending two representatives of another artist group dressed as gorillas with the number 50 written on their costumes, apparently as a protest against male dominance within the music industry.
The group became prominent in late 2005 when José González covered "Heartbeats" on his 2003 album, Veneer. The song was used by Sony in a commercial for Bravia television sets, and released as a single in early 2006. The group commented on this in a Dagens Nyheter article, claiming that Sony paid a large sum of money to use the song. In view of the group's left-wing views and non-commercial philosophy, they excused this transaction on the basis that the money was needed to establish their record company.
The Knife's song "We Share Our Mothers' Health" from their album Silent Shout was featured by the iTunes store as a free song of the week in late 2006. This song was also featured in the ABC series Ugly Betty, as well as an episode of CSI: NY.
(mediaChick's Note: I have thoughtfully included this LIVE performance video below.)At the Swedish Grammies awards in January 2007, The Knife won in all six categories they were nominated in: Composer of the Year, Music DVD of the Year, Producer of the Year, Pop Group of the Year, Album of the Year and Artist of the Year. Again, they did not attend the award ceremony.
(Instead they released 6 bizzare pre-recorded acceptance speech videos.)Official "Pass It On" video
