Taken from the studio version of the band’s Darwinian Opera Tomorrow, In A Year out on March 1st, comes this free download which was made available to all mailing list subscribers today.
‘Colouring of Pigeons’ is an 11 minute frequently-discordant opus featuring operatic squalls, much percussion and Karin’s unique voice along with Kristina Wahlin Momme and Lærke Bo Winther. The whole project was a collaboration with Planningtorock and Mt. Sims. For the project, Karin and Olof researched Darwin literature and opera in general;seeing as they had no idea about it beforehand. Olof even attended a field recording workshop in the Amazon to record sounds.
MP3: The Knife – Colouring of Pigeons
More info here. Tracklisting and a live video from the show in the full post.
Olof Dreijer says:
At first it was very difficult as we really didn’t know anything about opera. We’d never been to one. I didn’t even know what the word libretto meant. But after some studying, and just getting used to opera’s essence of pretentious and dramatic gestures, I found that there is a lot to learn and play with. In fact, our ignorance gave us a positive respectless approach to making opera. It took me about a year to become emotionally moved by an opera singer and now I really do. I really like the basic theatrical values of opera and the easy way it brings forward a narrative. We’ve approached this before in The Knife but never in such a clear way.
Tracklisting
CD 1
01. Intro
02. Epochs
03. Geology
04. Upheaved
05. Minerals
06. Ebb Tide Explorer
07. Variation of Birds
08. Letter to Henslow
09. Schoal Swarm Orchestra
CD 2
01. Annie’s Box
02. Tumult
03. Colouring of Pigeons
04. Seeds
05. Tomorrow in a Year
06. The Height of Summer
Bonus track
07. Annie’s Box (alt. vocal)
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
😉 waiting for this with bated breadth 🙂 would love to see it live!
Awesome, really looking forward to this. Their cover of ‘Heartbeats’ was amazing. There’s some more info about the new album and a new track to download/stream here http://bit.ly/7fbec7
Heartbeats was their song, no?
NO NO NO NO NO! Oh hell no. Hearbeats is very much a Knife song! José Gonzalez (a friend of theirs, as it happens) covered it. Afterwards, not beforewards. There’s actually a better cover, by a choir, out there:
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00P42VO43pE ]
Anyway, yeah, I went to Aarhus in Denmark to see the opera and it was bleedin’ amazing. That is all.
Indeed it was their song first. Jose did the cover.
that tune is incredible.
This is absolutely brilliant.
I really like it. no surprise there though 😉
We are now truly living in the second age of prog… Good job it’s ace or all this is going to look so silly a few years down the line.
totally amazing, and I’m not even a huge Knife fan. I’d love to see this. I don’t suppose we can get it to the docklands theatre?