The Knife: Tomorrow's World

On the phone from his studio in Stockholm, The Knife's Olof Dreijer has a confession to make about his latest work: “I knew nothing of opera; I had never even seen one. This project began as a performance piece and at first I thought it would be difficult or impossible to take on a project that I couldn’t realise," admits Dreijer, one half of the sublime – and typically interview shy – Swedish electronic duo The Knife. "I went to my first opera and then began studying more contemporary composers so that I could approach the area I was being asked to work on. I think our lack of knowledge and preconceptions about opera helped, actually.”

Olof is speaking about the recently completed Tomorrow, in a Year, produced by Danish theatre company Hotel Pro Forma. Informed by the evolutionary theory, life and work of Charles Darwin, the production is brought to life by an opera singer, pop vocalist and actor performing The Knife’s music whilst representing Darwin, time and nature on stage. Not entirely a breeze.

So how did the soundtrack commission come to arrive in Olof's lap, given his unfamiliarity with the medium? It seems his background in experimental sounds and secretive production processes proved alluring.

“They contacted us and asked us to create the music for this piece," Olof starts. "We didn’t have experience in this field and I think that’s why they approached us. Hotel Pro Forma have been around since the 80s, so they obviously know what they are doing and they must have thought that our inexperience would have brought a different approach to the project.”

As the project began to unfold, Olof was aided and abetted by his sister and other half of The Knife, Karin Dreijer Anderson, who worked on the opera whilst preparing her now successful side project, Fever Ray. The musical process began early in 2008 with the duo adopting Berlin-based experimentalists Janine Rostron and Matthew Sims (AKA Planningtorock and Mt. Sims respectively) as creative family members. The ensemble was completed by Danish mezzo soprano Kristina Wahlin Momme, Danish actress Laerke Bo Winther and Swedish pop singer Jonathan Johansson who shared the variety of remaining vocal parts.

As the work unfolded the group studied concrete music – music typically composed of found sounds, often from an unseen source. In this case, The Knife sought recordings of nature. “I had the opportunity to go on a trip to the Amazon and I recorded a lot there whilst I tried to capture individual animal sounds," reveals Olof. "Of course, in the Amazon, recording individual sounds in all that noise is impossible. In a way, those recordings are very appropriate for the subject matter. And there are sounds that you at first think are random, like the rhythms of a frog chorus for example. But then you start to hear these very strict patterns and rhythms. It’s really fascinating and wonderful.”

So how did they approach the idea of representing Darwin’s texts and ideas in song?

“Reading about Darwin’s discovery of the development of bird song was important," asserts Olof, alluding to the imagery on the soundtrack's sleeve. "Birds learn from one another and add various notes to create an evolving song. From that, I set up a process that would allow my equipment to create an evolving sound with little or no input. It would begin with a note, followed by another from a youngling as it copied from its mother. So I constructed a feedback noise inspired by this. I made a small short sound and let it duplicate until it created something with a completely new character.

"Self-copying is a reference to Richard Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene. By setting up a series of analogue effects that were designed to change into each other. That way we were able to let the sound evolve without having any more input as the system carried out its own evolution.”

How easy was it to attach emotion to a piece of work that involved machines creating entire parts of the music themselves and with a subject matter so rooted in science?

“We struggled with how to get the super scientific theory and how to bring emotion to it. How could we explain anything that scientists haven’t already covered? We make music through an intuitive process and that process is what brings the emotion. We had to question what we find natural, that’s what Darwin did in his studies. Once work started, everything began to fall into place. When I was reading Darwin he made references to everything being part of a bigger system.”

The daunting prospect of merging advanced electronic music and experimental techniques with opera was made all the more difficult by the different creative parties – composers, choreographer, costume designer and set designer – being apart from Olof and his musical collaborators. How has the opera been received so far?

“Most people have liked the music and I’m happy about that," says Olof. "The main criticism has been the presentation and choreography, which I suppose is part of the process of us all being separated.”

Tomorrow, in a Year is set to be released as a double disc audio recording to coincide with the opening of the stage production. It is an expansive and at times challenging record that takes on the mammoth task before it with a lot of skill if not perfection. But where does Olof see this work in the context of The Knife’s catalogue to date?

“Well, it’s definitely conceptual. Every sound is motivated by the text of someone other than us, it is lifted straight from Darwin. Also, this is the outcome of a collaboration from four people so it is a whole different process.”

The Knife are made special by their desire to remain different and avoid stagnance through repetition. To this day – even after three albums, discounting their soundtrack work – they've only embarked on one official tour, a fact which Olof attributes to their struggle to present the music on stage. Now that The Knife has created new material for the Hotel Pro Forma project and Karin’s duties as Fever Ray have indefinitely cooled (with the exception of a date at Coachella Festival in April), might a proper sequel to 2006's Silent Shout be soon to follow?

“There are no plans at the moment," says Olof, before offering some parting consolation. "There are still a lot of projects on the cards. We’re focusing on the label just now, but we are both open to the idea. Time will tell.”