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Apr 22, 2013 The Knife By Mike Hilleary

Scheduled to hit the road soon in support of their recently released album epic Shaking the Habitual, The Knife have unveiled another manifesto-length glimpse into their artistic vision, this time going into what fans will expect to experience during their live shows. According to their open letter:

We just have to go faster we mean breakneck we mean “like crazy”. We are never faceless, not even in the most grey anonymous streets of the city. We will never stop being responsible, being extensions, of one another. We will never stop longing for each other, and for something else. We, The Knife, will be performing live. We will be there, on stage, all seven of us, sometimes all ten of us, or even more. We have worked hard, together. Things, ideas, concepts have been tried, tested, discarded, evolved, perfected and discarded again. We know of the performative parts of power (Hegemony! Hi!), the on-going upholdance of everything through the performance of everyone. The habitual dance of the ordinary, the narratives of the normal. We know how the norm functions. But this is not every day. We have put on our glitter, we are ready to sparkle. This is special, if we were birds, (maybe we are) our feathers would shine (they do). We are building a place, a scene, a moment. But the blocks aren’t set, the pieces move. We slipper and slide around it, under it, above. Shaking our habitat. With raging lungs we breathe, exhausted but enthralled. We sweat and smile and frown, laughing at the future, crying at the past, holding on. Legs astride, one foot yours, one foot ours. You have the most beautiful way of putting one foot in front of the other. Being horizontal is wonderful most things we love are open ended. Kick, kick, left leg back, turn, kick, right leg. Stay. Things get blurry, that’s ok. We’ll move. Open arms, twisted ankles. We will be performing live. All of us.

While you can read the rest of the letter here, the electronic duo goes on to introduce the opening act for their European dates, an “Absurdist Aerobics class taught by a master-teacher-guru-shaman-dictator-aerobics instructor- new age workshop leader, Tarek Halaby.”

DEEP AEROBICS is a workout form invented and shamelessly disseminated by Miguel Gutierrez, who hopes to soon destroy the technique, because it’s just too hard to teach, and really the world is going to hell in a hand basket anyway. It is the communal/political/conceptual/imaginational workout experience you always wanted but never could embarrass yourself enough to find or do in public. It is for anyone who has ever had any interest in combining the joie de vivre that is the vigorous bouncing of one’s anatomical/spiritual/energetic molecules with the existential absurdity that is living in a world/country/economic system of injustice, war-mongering, and cultural ineptitude. Oh wait, that’s you. If you feel like it: come in your own crazy aerobics costume, whatever that means to you. Taste the sweat.

ps. Take one class and you are instantly a certified master teacher of the form. No yearly dues, fees, reports. Just give credit to Miguel Gutierrez.

For the band’s hometown shows in Stockholm May 16-17, The Knife will open with a feminist art collective called ÖFA-KOLLEKTIVET, who will host “Danceoake,” “like karaoke but instead of singing alone you dance to music videos together with a full dance floor. Danceoke shifts the perspective of performer/audience and makes people come together no matter what.” All in all in sounds like dementedly good time.

The Knife Tour Dates:

04-27 Hamburg, Germany - Docks
04-29 Milan, Italy - Magazzini Generali
04-30 Zurich, Switzerland - Komplex 457
05-01 Munich, Germany - Muffathalle
05-02 Cologne, Germany - E Werk
05-04 Paris, France - Cite De La Musique
05-05 Brussels, Belgium - Ancienne Belgique
05-06 Amsterdam, Holland 0 Paradiso
05-08 London, England - Roundhouse
05-11 Berlin, Germany - Columbiahalle
05-12 Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega
05-13 Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega
05-15 Oslo, Norway - Sentrum
05-16 Stockholm, Sweden - Hangaren Subtopia

(www.theknife.net)