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Artist News Gigs & Festivals
The Knife to quit touring and “close down”
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 22 August 2014
The Knife have decided that they’ve had enough of touring, so they’re going to stop. But not before they’ve toured some more. After that it’s definitely all over, though.
Announcing this news, the duo said in a statement: “We are doing our last tour! In the autumn we will round up the ‘Shaking The Habitual Show Tour’ with a number of European dates. After the touring last year we reworked the show during the winter. The performers, previously known as dancers, learnt how to sing and play instruments, the stage got three levels, Shannon Funchess joined us and the show became more fun and shiny. We performed it in the US in the spring and now we would love you to join us in our dance for some last shaking moves”.
But what does this mean exactly? Are they just quitting touring, or is this the end of The Knife as a project entirely? Apparently the latter, according to Dazed & Confused, which asked for clarification from the duo’s PR, after Karin Dreijer made a slightly ambiguous statement in a new interview with the publication.
“For me, The Knife is anything and nothing. It can be whatever you want”, she said, cryptically. “At the moment, The Knife is 25 people touring and even more people documenting the process, making videos and helping us out with different things. When we finish the tour now in November we will close down, it’s our last tour. We don’t have any obligations to continue, it should only and always be for fun.
The phrase “we don’t have any obligations to continue” sounds like she’s not really sure what the future holds, but if you want to take that as a permanent split, then fine. Take it.
Explaining the final shows further, Karin said in a statement: “When we talked about going on tour again, the first idea was to make a dance show, which we also decided to do. So we had to rework the tracks to accompany that idea”.
Her brother Olof added: “I think the dance-y beat-oriented reworks we’ve done are not only made to dance to in the show, but they are also a reaction towards the more distorted material on the ‘Shaking The Habitual’ album. We keep on reacting from previous experiences”.
The brief tour will come to a close with a performance at this year’s Iceland Airwaves festival, but if you want to see them in the UK, you’ll need to head down to the Manchester Academy on 5 Nov or the Brixton Academy on 6 Nov. Tickets are on sale as of this morning.
If you can’t make any of the dates, then you might just about be able to console yourself with a mini-album featuring studio recordings of the new versions of some of the songs the duo have reworked for the tour, which will be released in November.
The tracklist looks like this:
We Share Our Mothers’ Health (Shaken-Up Version)
Got 2 Let U (Shaken-Up Version)
Bird (Shaken-Up Version)
Without You My Life Would Be Boring (Shaken-Up Version)
Pass This On (Shaken-Up Version featuring Shannon Funchess)
Ready To Lose (Shaken-Up Version)
Stay Out Here (Shaken-Up Version)
Silent Shout (Shaken-Up Version)
You can listen to the new version of ‘Pass This On’ here, and watch a trailer for the tour here:
