The Knife Announce New Live Album and Concert Film
By Michelle Kim, Jazz Monroe.
After sharing a handful of creepy teaser videos, the Knife have announced a live film, album, and photo book. Shaking the Habitual: Live at Terminal 5 captures one of the Knife’s final live performances behind their last album before calling it quits. The full package is set to arrive in mainland Europe September 1 via Rabid, but its international release is in jeopardy. People in North and South America, the UK, and Asia will not be able to buy the release, due to a “long-running dispute” between the Knife and Brille, their label partner in those territories, according to a press release. International fans will, however, be able to stream the film on the Knife’s site from September 1, according to their representative. Check out a preview below.
Brille claims to hold the rights to the film and the album in the above territories. The label’s lawyers also promise to block “any attempt by Rabid to release or exploit the Live Album itself independently or via a third party in Brille’s Territory.” The Knife’s management state that the album will be available on import, however.
The 2014 tour behind Shaking the Habitual saw Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer expanding their live show into a performance involving a 11-piece dance troupe. “In the process of making Shaking the Habitual, we realized that it was time for us to question the concept of the Knife in a wider sense,” they said in a press release. “Or, rather, we wanted to challenge the idea of the Knife that had been created somehow. We needed to find a way to do and be what we wanted, taking the commercial dimension of the Knife into account only to be able to find ways to exist outside of it.” The film screens on August 30 at the Bio Rio Cinema in Stockholm, Sweden.
The live album and film is accompanied by a limited-edition photo book chronicling the final tour, featuring images by Alexa Vachon. The band is also auctioning off the instruments that were specially made for the tour by artist Bella Rune. She explains they were “created in an attempt to visualize some of the sounds on the album to challenge expected conventions in electronic music.” Bella continues, “To me, the instruments are what the album would look like if it took corporeal form...” Proceeds from the instrument auctions will go towards the No One Is Illegal Network, an organization that “works to provide practical support to people who are forced to live undocumented after having had their applications for asylum refused.”
Read Pitchfork’s new interview, “The Knife on Coming Back (At Least for a Concert Film)” on the Pitch.
This story originally appeared on Pitchfork.
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