Stabbing Westward

For most people, Sweden’s contribution to popular culture stops at ABBA and Ikea, but, as anyone who listens to electronic music will tell you, it has been at the forefront of techno and more recently, chart topping house music.

Adam Beyer, Joel Mull and Cari Lekebusch set the agenda for hard-edged club techno in the mid to late 90s, Jesper Dahlback is leading the 303 revival and Eric Prydz, well, when he’s not re-inventing Steve Winwood as the soundtrack for the gym-toned generation, he’s busy crafting full-blooded, deep Detroit techno on Adam Beyer’s Truesoul label.

The Knife, aka siblings Karin and Olof Dreijer, are the latest electronic act to come from Sweden and, while they don’t warrant the same underground kudos as their peers, their fusion of electro, pop and angst-ridden Gothic vocals have nonetheless won them fans in high places.

As Olof explains, a number of factors have influenced the high proliferation of Swedish producers.

“One of the reasons is that music is a big part of the school education, which is paid for by the government,” he explains in a whispered voice. “We also have the highest number of recording studios per head of population in the world and the weather also plays a role. We’re based in Stockholm, but the further north you go, where it gets really cold and there’s not much else to do all winter, that’s where most of the techno gets made and where the punk and hardcore scenes thrive. The Hives, for example, are from the north of Sweden.”

Although their album is full of energetic electro-pop and Karin’s vocals aren’t radically dissimilar from fellow Scandinavian chanteuse Bjork – something that Olof disputes, claiming that “it’s only because there are so few female expressionists” - The Knife are no normal pop group.

“We could have written songs about love, freedom or partying, but that’s not interesting for us and we want to address issues that are important, like political and feminist ideas,” Olof explains. “Karin writes all the lyrics, but I discuss everything with her to make sure that we both agree on what is used. We think that it’s important to address feminist issues because we still live in a male-dominated society. We want that to change, for it to reach a situation where it’s an equal society, but we realise that it’s a long way off.

“We also address issues like police brutality towards demonstrators and the way famous artists use charity shows merely to promote their latest release. We believe that, instead of us having to donate money to charity, the western governments should just cancel all Third World debt.”

The Knife’s politically-aware manifesto isn’t the only thing that is unusual about the duo. While Olof grew up listening to dance music, Karin, who is six years older, was weaned on singers like Siouxsie Sioux – an influence that is audible on Deep Cuts. Olof also says that they weren’t close until they started working together.

“The age difference had a lot to do with it and, although we had both been in bands before, we only really got to know each other properly when we started working together as The Knife in 1999. We get on well together and things have gone smoothly so far, there have been no major problems,” he maintains.

This unconventional sibling relationship is more of a help than a hindrance on Deep Cuts and the album’s strength lies in its ability to coherently unite underground electronic elements with poppy nous and Karin’s haunting vocals.

“It’s the first time we’ve used choruses – because we wanted to make a clear statement,”?he concludes, “because we knew that doing it this way would make it easier to convey our message to more people.”

Deep Cuts is out on V2 on February 11.