But I Was There: The Knife @ the El Rey Theater, 11/04/06

The Knife, "Marble House" (live version) - On a certain level, it feels like I should just be able to say I SAW THE KNIFE TWO DAYS AGO AND IT WAS GLORIOUS; lord knows that's been the reaction of pretty much everyone else who's come into contact with their almost maliciously awesome live show, and not without good reason. It's just that, in what I'm sure will come as a surprise to my friends to whom I've been crowing about my attendance for pretty much the last three days straight, I'm not really sure if that gets to the heart of the experience. I mean, yes it was absolutely an unforgettable and thrilling experience that absolutely trumps everything else they've ever done (including the best album of this year) and yes it was easily the best concert I've seen since Daft Punk's seismic event at Coachella (and who would have guessed that the two best shows I saw this year came courtesy of unrecognizable masked figures playing pre-recorded music?), but the more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that the raison d'etre of the Knife's show had little if anything to do with its status as an "extravaganza" of any sort. Shit like that is for teenagers, and the Knife ain't My Chemical Romance.

In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the defining characteristic of the Knife's show was how gentle they were, a term which must sound strange applied to a band called the Knife who put out albums full of vaguely incestuous techno-ballads on a label called Rabid Records but which, in the end, is the only shoe that really fits. The main thing I think I'll probably remember from the show - aside from all the music and all the special effects and so on - was the quiet awe in which the audience seemed to be taking in the performance. I'm used to Los Angeles crowds being quiet (read: shitty), but this was something else; had the power suddenly cut out leaving the entire theater in a state of silence, there would have been a really poignant moment of all-consuming pin-dropping bird-chirping stillness followed immediately by the loudest and most violent riot nine hundred unbooked hipster DJs could muster. But a part of me kept wondering what could have possibly brought a reverie like this on - after all, I'd bet dollars to donuts that a substantial subset of that audience worked in the film industry and was thus privy to the kind of exploitation of technology for the purposes of entertainment or effect that would send the Dreijers' art director's teeth a-gnashing. Seeing a gigantic, torpid, deformed face appear for "Marble House" was indelibly cool, but in the face of an audience so packed with industry fuxx0rz, it was more than a little shocking to walk away not feeling like I'd just been had.

And this is in no small part due to the clear and present fact that the Knife were in no way trying to have any of us. If you've read any of the reviews of the show, you've no doubt read about how all the music was prerecorded and they wore masks and they barely even acknowledged the audience's presence and Olof wasn't even really drumming and a bloo bloo bloo; you've also doubtlessly noticed that none of these choices in any way inhibited any appreciation of the show itself. Think about it for a second - would your enjoyment of a song as baroque and neuroic as "Marble House" really be enhanced by some Baltic chanteuse asking if you're ready to rock? Does "Kino" really demand too much embellishment to send you into full-on rave-out mode (speaking of which, JESUS CHRIST GO TRACK THE LIVE VERSION OF THAT SONG DOWN NOW)? Didn't "Heartbeats" already totally confirm your life when you heard it on record? What exactly are the Knife supposed to do here?

The answer, brilliantly, turned out to be "not much". The Silent Shout tour is being prepped for release as a DVD, which is about as far from an accident as you can get, because the whole night was about isolating the elements that gave the songs life in the first place and figuring out how to best exploit them in the context of people standing and looking at stuff instead of sitting and listening to stuff. I really do think the "standing" aspect was crucial - things you see take on a whole new level of significance when you have to wrench your neck around like you're trying to trace the Magic Bullet's trajectory with it in order to see a detail more clearly than when you're sitting down with a relatively unobstructed view. The visuals in and of themselves weren't anything revelatory - at times overwhelmingly beautiful, yes (and this is exactly where I'd be linking to the set-opening version of "Pass This On"'s geometric fireworks if Youtube would just give up the booty already), but this is Los Angeles; "beautiful" rings me up at the cash register when I'm buying deoderant and Maker's Mark. But they sure were devastatingly appropriate, with the obvious highlight being the aforementioned spectral faces that showed up for "Marble House" - what better way, after all, to underscore the "dialogue" aspect of the song than to literally show another face singing it? Well, except to compound the effect by rejiggering the actual track to minimize the original's gloomy glory as much as possible; the intro to the live version of "Marble House", as you've no doubt heard by now if you've already followed the download link, is almost disarmingly childlike, and even when the song goes into full sweep towards the end (and BOY DOES IT EVER), it never really conjures up images of Mrs. Havisham descending a staircase or whatever - it's just really, really, really, really, really pretty. But that doesn't mean the experience was any less creepy - in fact, set against an incalculably languid corpse-face it might actually outstrip the original in that department, and that's no mean feat.

Like I said, the crowd was just in awe of the whole experience, but I've seen crowds in awe of bands before; this was a wholly different kind of awe than I saw shown to the Strokes or Daft Punk or even someone like Akron/Family or Vashti Bunyan. I would imagine that this was the kind of awe you'd have found in silent film audiences - the kind of awe you get from having your suspicions about your experiences confirmed. It's not necessarily the most energizing or invigorating or pump-yr-skinny-fists-like-you're-trying-to-punch-God sensation, true - after all, exactly how revitalizing can the realization that your perceptions are, in fact, grounded in reality be? - but it's an incredibly rare one, especially in an arena as tacky and self-aggrandizing as pop music. And if the Knife's show was any indication, the instant that reverie passes, complete and total bedlam kicks in. I mean, hell, remember the first time you listened to Silent Shout and thought "Holy hell, this is an album right here"? Imagine the live version of that. THAT is what you missed; everything else was just so much window dressing. (Click here to buy Silent Shout from Amazon.com, or click here to pre-order the Silent Shout: An Audio-Visual Experience DVD from Bengans webshop)

Blackstrobe, "Shining Bright Star" (Phones Industrial mix) - For a while I hesitated before posting this as the accompanying track because, let's face it, the odds are pretty good that I'll run out of posting steam towards the middle of the week and need something substantial as Hype Machine bait, and the brandest spankingest newest remix from Camp Mr. The Paul Epworth Motherfuckers certainly fits that bill (especially given the name he happens to be remixing - after the DFA working with Liquid Liquid and Arthur Russell, the aesthetic links between Epworth's Phones-related electro-bashery and Blackstrobe's fiercely technological joyscowls are about as tidy as you'll find on the indie circuit today. Jesus, this is a long sentence). Then I figured FUCK THAT; facts are facts, and the facts here state that this might actually be the best thing to emerge from said aforementioned camp since the much-beloved Shaznay Lewis remix like two years ago despite being married to a clearly inferior song. But really, if the sixty squillion e-spins I've given it ever since stumbling over it are to be trusted, a large part of the song's charm is inextricable from the way in which it compensates for the original track's late-period NIN b-side leanings; instead of listening to the vocals, consider the elegant counterbalance in which Epworth places that lip-curling bass and those buzzsaw high-register synth snarls, or the way he sets them both against a deceptively complex drum track. Obviously, of course, you could just wait for the chorus to kick in to hear everything at once; you could also fuck a bag full of lightbulbs for all I care. I mean, this is almost painfully well-realized stuff for a track conceptualized, arranged, and assembled in eight hours or less; I kinda get the feeling that if he took ten, Kitsune and Colette and all the other haircut-house labels would be facing their Appomattox. (The Phones remix of "Shining Bright Star" will appear on the forthcoming Blackstrobe remix compilation "A Remix Selection" which is currently unavailable for preorder; in the meantime, click here to visit Juno.co.uk to buy Blackstrobe records, or click here to visit the homepage of the remix project to subscribe to their podcast and mailing list)

HEY WAIT SHIT FUCK SO MY MAIL CAME AND THERE WAS THIS ENVELOPE EDIT:

ShitDisco, "Reactor Party" - It honestly took me a couple dozen plays before I woke up to the realization that around this time last year I had, against all odds, managed to make a brilliant purchase in the form of ShitDisco's Teflon-hewn debut single "Disco Blood", which seems a little odd on the surface since being able to quickly surmise whether or not I want to get behind a band with a name like "ShitDisco" would have been one of those things I'd have hoped I would have developed by the age of twenty-five. So it's a little bit alarming, then, to have popped "Reactor Party" onto my iPod and given it an idle spin later (thinking "MAN, JUST LET ME GET THROUGH THIS AND THEN I CAN GET TO THAT SWEET SWEET NEW TACTICIANS SINGLE", although you can bet the oft-referred-to farm that we'll be revisiting that little gem later in the week) only to groggily regain my composure three minutes and eight seconds later (times like eight or nine) and discover myself demanding that the dorks I yell at on the internet download it NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW. See if you can spot the moment when I sat rod-straight up and started filling the empty space of my studio apartment with joyous wailing about how the Klaxons having been UTTERLY wrecked at their own game. The more of this "New Rave" stuff I come across, the more intractable the notion of it as "emo for The Exact Opposite Of Emo People" becomes in my mind, but PIIIIIIIIG SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSOOOEY, it is nothing but worth it as long as we get songs like this and "Gravity's Rainbow" out of the deal. Seriously, this one's a keeper. (Click here to buy the "Reactor Party" single from Rough Trade)

ELSEWHERE:

- HEY VOXTROT-LIKIN' FOLXXX: Didja know that their keyboardist has his own side-project called Sparrowhouse that's been responsible for at least one incredibly well-put-together 70s-singer/songwriter song ("When I Am Gone")? Because I sure didn't, and I paid for my ignorance in flesh; apparently Jared was selling copies of his EP at Voxtrot's LA date and I either missed them or blocked them out or something. Fortunately the Twin Princesses of Promoting Austin As A Substantially More Culturally Vibrant City Than Georgetown And Points West over at The Rich Girls Are Weeping pointed out that it's also available for preorder and host a VERY EXCELLENT track from it to boot; I would strenuously urge you to take advantage of both.

- CAN A MOTHERFUCKER GET A TRANSCRIPT OF WHATEVER THE HELL IS BEING SAID ABOUT ME ON FACEBOOK AND THAT BAR EXAM PLACE. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many terrifying possibilities in each case for me to just shrug it off.