Can’t you feel the Knife? The art-scarred Swedish electro-poppers are slicing and dicing fans’ fragile psyches, torturing their followers like the supposedly controversial opening segment of an Oscar-nominated manhunt movie. But no, contrary to what you’ve read, you can’t hear their new, nine-minute single “Full of Fire.” Not even in cruelly short 30-second bursts. The pain is stabbing.
Last week, Mute confirmed to Pitchfork that the label would be releasing the single next week, after a now-deleted listing for the track surfaced on Amazon. The Knife are set to release new album Shaking the Habitual on April 9, so the timing makes sense, though the wait has been excruciating. But this morning, Belgian blog Disco Naivete posted an embed from London’s Juno Records, which reportedly allowed listeners to hear the nine-minute song in full, but with a too-perfectly sadistic catch: They could only listen in 30-second increments.
By the time most U.S.-based publications started posting the embed, little did they notice that it was no longer playing. As early as 8:13 a.m. EST, Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste, who coincidentally has his own “Knife” song, tweeted, “Can’t get this knife song to work.” While Disco Naivete has tweeted that the song is “amazing” and said “the Knife have outdone themselves again,” the rest of us will have to wait. (As we probably should’ve anyway, because 30 seconds at a time is no way to evaluate a piece of music, is it?)
You know what else nobody has seemed to notice? Someone posted a live video way back in 2010 of what is listed as the Knife’s “Full of Fire (Solaris Stimulation).” Coincidence? Maybe! The same YouTube account also posted a video late last year of what it bills as “Shaking the Habitual” by the Knife, but it calls the song a cover of a New Jersey band called Funeral Corporate. So watch at your own risk. At least there’s a light show and plenty of squiggly electro-acoustic dissonance.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zYE3ym9jbUE%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_detailpage
Still feeling tortured? Us, too. But it’s more humane than saying you can listen to a nine-minute song in 30-second clips that don’t exist anyway.
What the hell! While we’re tormenting ourselves, here’s an actual 30-sample of the Knife’s “Full of Fire” (via Nothing But Hope and Passion). There’s whirring electronic percussion, urgent synths, and what certainly sound like the real Karin Dreijer Andersson hissing, “Sometimes I get problems that are hard to solve.” Admit it, you like being kept waiting:
