by Chris Young on February 5, 2010
What did the beginning of time sound like? The Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma commissioned the The Knife to find out.
The result is a 92-minute electro-opera based on Darwin’s On the Origin of Species composed by the Swedish brother-sister duo with help from Berlin electronic artists Planningtorock and Mt. Sims, an Icelandic percussionist Hjorleifur Jonsson, and several vocalists: an opera singer (Kristina Wahlin), an actor, a pop singer (Jonathan Johansson), and The Knife’s sister-half Karin Dreijer-Andersson (Fever Ray).
Tomorrow, in a Year is an opera that embodies Darwin: It evolves.
Listen to Tomorrow, in a Year below.
Time begins with nothingness, just brushing silence and electronic chatter of water drops, an approaching storm of static, rushing wind, humming electricity, and drum machine beats. Waxing and waning from violence to peace, the beginning of the world is erratically disjointed and the first vocal utterance is Wahlin’s mezzo-soprano, coming after the 7-minute mark.
With bent circuits and moaning metal, this transforming, dramatic world teeters on the brink between success and failure, but flourishes of activity make us believe it will survive–such as the mimicked and real field samples recorded by brother Olof Dreijer in the Amazon jungle. Organic and invented birds and insects hum through tracks like “Letters To Henslow,” which features authentic but haunting bird chirps and calls, and “Schoal Swarm Orchestra,” with its cold, alloy buzzing.
Halfway though, discernible instruments are revealed on “Annie’s Box” with the cello as some semblance of traditional music develops. Aural themes are revisited as earlier hoots return but matured into a chorus, on “Colouring of Pigeons.”
The album continues to adapt melding Karin’s distinct vocals with operatic explosions, hollow, tribal percussion, driving, repetitive electro-beats, and childish, Playskool synths while the experiment becomes genuinely musical.
As the project really begins to bloom, it bows out, but with something easily digestible by itself, “The Height Of Summer”–a production by modern man for modern society. But with the tide rushing in and the wind rustling leaves, we’re reminded of our fragile place in nature.
With every additional listen to The Knife’s electronic soundscape, you hear a new phylum, family, species being created, evolving. You’re led to imagine that if the world went dark, in the hush before apocalypse, this album would continue droning on and on and on.
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