Fusing dark synth, surrealist lyrics and the occult – you can’t accuse Swedish pop band The Knife of being predictable. Working out of Stockholm, the brother/sister duo, Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer, have been making electro hits together since 1999. Staying deliberately secluded from the mainstream, the twosome seem to want their music to stay a dark secret. The enigmatic band are touring one of their most unusual projects to date – an opera entitled, ‘Tomorrow, in a Year’.

Commissioned by experimental Danish theatre group, Hotel Pro Forma, the libretto is all about natural selection, taking inspiration from the father of evolution, Charles Darwin. We caught the show at The Barbican last month. It’s an astounding amalgamation of art and science – covering everything from evolutionary theory to Darwin’s love letters about his daughter, Anne. Innovative, enthralling and chilling – it’s opera, but not as we know it.

‘Tomorrow, in a Year’ the album is out now. The opera will be showing at the Melborne International Arts Festival from 21st – 23rd October.

theknife.net

Words by Felicity Shaw

Tags: Felicity Shaw, hotel pro forma, Karin Dreijer Andersson, Olof Dreijer, the knife

But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver
In fifty, gold
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
– Sylvia Plath, The Applicant

By Felicity Shaw

Tags: Felicity Shaw, Sylvia Plath, The Applicant

“The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed–would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper–the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.”
George Orwell, 1984.

By Felicity Shaw

Tags: Felicity Shaw, George Orwell

“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! … Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey.

By Felicity Shaw

Tags: Felicity Shaw, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey