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The Knife Are Over: ‘We Don’t Have Any Obligations to Continue’

The Knife Over Tour We Don't Have Any Obligations to Continue

For all their awesomely outlandish experimentalism, one might have hoped the Knife would’ve gone out with a bang, not an alternate versions album. But it looks like the Swedish electronic duo’s June remix collection, Shaken Up Versions, will be it’s last release, according to Dazed & Confused. The publication had sent interview questions to the Knife around that project’s release, then a “frustrating silence ensued” and lasted months… until now.

Thursday, the band returned the questionaire with word of their breakup contained therein. When asked whether the past couple of years had re-energized their interest in the project, Karin Dreijer said their week-long tour in November would be their last. 

“For me, The Knife is anything and nothing,” she wrote. “It can be whatever you want. 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.”

PR then confirmed the news the Knife would call it quits after this tour.

Karin and her brother Olof Deijer have built a career out of the unpredictable, of course, so perhaps this shouldn’t come as such a surprise. They began the project in 1999 but didn’t tour until 2006 (c. Silent Shout). It was seven years until a proper follow-up arrived — 2013’s Shaking the Habitual — with help from Karin’s Fever Ray solo endeavor arriving in 2009, and a collaborative opera album, Tomorrow, in a Year, in 2010.

Never chart-toppers despite their great critical acclaim, the Knife really only received popular attention for José Gonzalez’s cover of “Heartbeats” (featured in a brilliant Sony ad) and Robyn’s hit “Who’s That Girl?,” which was co-written and composed with the Dreijers. Over their 15 years, they released four LPs and two EPs. Most recently, in June, they duo served as the house band for a Swedish “anti-nationalist cabaret” called Europa Europa, created with art group Ful.