CD Review

The Knife – “Silent Shout”

By Marcus Pan

The Knife is a Swedish outfit. Silent Shout is their third release and shows a brilliant command of interesting electronics, experimentation and ambient movements. Their music will shift form from trance to avante garde, experimental to EBM and do so without warning and without a hitch. The group is made up of brother and sister Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Anderson and the birth of the group lies somewhere in 1999. Silent Shout, picked up by Mute Records in New York City, will be the first time The Knife have been sold directly in the States.

The nominal Silent Shout which opens this CD is groovalicious, with deep bass tones and effervescent synthwork building brilliantly over it all. Quiet vocals whisper in occasionally making this a nice, subtle combination of humanity and EBM electronics. It has a nice trancey feel to it overall and the continuous low tone bass rhythm is soulful and moving.

Harmony works occasionally have a trace of weirdness to it, being harmonized nicely but somehow battling itself. Neverland is a perfect example of this, each voice vying for an upper hand in the mix without being aggressive about it. Silent Shout overall achieves a level of otherworldliness, tracks like We Share Our Mothers’ Health being quite weird with its bubbly belly movements. Vocal weirdness during One Hit is another example of belly movements, an infectious rhythm bouncing it along.

Then Na Na Na will become natural sounding and smooth, before Marble House’s light tapping and floaty soundscapes take us further into a different place that’s just barely out of the reach of vision. Like a Pen begins with a stomp-like trippy tapping collection of funky rhythms and backbeats, synths adding a bouncy ensemble of catchy melodies.

Silent Shout was excellent – different, weird, balmy and otherworldly. Funky and smooth movements with complicated shifts of EBM, trance, electronics and low key bass rhythms make for an interesting combination. Strange harmonies infuse humanistic feelings into the otherwise electro-experimentation giving it a sense of being attainable, if a little strange. The Knife show a brilliant ability to create warpy music ensembles without succumbing to the complicated mish-mash of most other EBM and electronic artists.

Contact Information:
Mute Records
Post: 140 W. 22nd St., #10 A, New York, NY, 10011, USA
Phone: (212) 255-7670 x241
E-Mail: leslie@mute.com
Web: www.mute.com

Click to Buy!