The Knife have announced a viewing party of the band’s 2014 Coachella performance during the Shaking The Habitual tour taking place October 30 at 3:30pm Eastern. Following the Coachella stream, Olof Dreijer will spin a special DJ set. The event will be preceded by a collection of classic videos from The Knife. Fans will be able to tune in via the band’s Facebook (available in standard video and Oculus formats), Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube channels. As the 20th anniversary celebrations roll on, Karin and Olof Dreijer are offering new insight into their revolutionary catalog in reverse chronological order.

Live Stream Schedule (all times Eastern)
3:30pm – preshow featuring classic Knife videos
4:00pm – The Knife live at Coachella 2014
5:00pm – Olof Dreijer DJ set

THE KNIFE ON SHAKING THE HABITUAL

Karin: “My kid asked me the other day, ‘Haha, you named Shaking The Habitual after Jane’s Addiction’s album, Ritual de lo Habitual?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s not, although that’s a great album. It’s a Foucault quote and it is about responsibility as an artist.’ Which I think is still super important to think about.”

The quote came from a popular collection of interviews with the French philosopher Michel Foucault, conducted between 1961 and 1984. Karin was into his book, The History of Sexuality, but neither xe nor Olof had read the interviews before. Something Foucault said near the end of his life jumped out at them.

Foucault: “The work of an intellectual is…to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking…and…to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).”

That energy and intention made sense of everything The Knife had ever stood for. Back in 2006, Karin was asked in a video interview to define the message behind their music. Xer answer: “Stretch borders and change standards.”

Karin: “I think [Foucault’s] quote also speaks to how I see things: the personal is political. Everything is political. Your choices you make.”

The music that grew into Shaking The Habitual spans drone zones to dance floor freakouts. It is the sound of Karin and Olof kicking at systems and structures; the result of searching for new sonic vocabulary to object to societal indoctrination. The songs they wrote draw lines between governments that carve up human rights (“A Tooth For An Eye”) and corporations that carve up the natural world (“Fracking Fluid Injection”).

Karin: “That was the time I started to really understand how intersectionality works. How all the different systems of oppression work together.”

Behind the scenes, the shaking up continued. For the first time, they looked critically at the gender split of the people they’d worked with in the past and flipped it. From the album’s mastering engineer right through to the band’s tour crew.

Olof: “Yeah, that was not even a concept for us on the 2006 tour. I don’t think I can recall thinking about representation. That you have a responsibility and a possibility to have an impact.”

Karin: “This time it was like, ‘Okay, we’re doing a show, we’re doing a tour, and we can actually decide ourselves how we would like to do this.’”

And when it came to the live show vision itself, they turned their thinking upside down.

Karin: “It was a friend of ours who told us that, ‘I think you two should dance.’ That’s how it started.”

Olof: “Basically, question the idea of The Knife on stage, question the idea of what it means to perform electronic music on stage. What is live? Is it playing instruments or is it embodying the music with dance? There were a lot of these questions.”

Newly Available Releases from The Knife (order here)
The Knife: Live At Terminal 5
Hannah Med H Soundtrack
“Pass This On” 7” vinyl
“För alla namn vi inte får använda (Europa Europa theme)”