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Silent Shout [The Knife] [CD] [1 disc] [724596932629]

The Knife
1 disc

1. Silent Shout
2. Neverland
3. Captain, The
4. We Share Our Mother's Health
5. Na Na Na
6. Marble House
7. Like a Pen
8. From Off to On
9. Forest Families
10. One Hit
11. Still Light
Additional Info

Manufacturer Part Number (MPN): 9326
Credits

Producer
Engineer
Anyone looking for the warm, accessible techno of the Knife's "Heartbeats" (popularized by a Jose Gonzalez cover) won't find it on SILENT SHOUT. On this album, Swedish siblings Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson push their brand of vocal electronica to its creepiest limits, and achieve a result that is by turns lovely and truly disturbing, but always engaging. The beats and chords are clean and inventive, from choppy, pogo-stick rhythms to smooth progressions and skittering clicks. The vocals are consistently bent, distorted, stretched, and otherwise manipulated. This can be funny or unnerving, depending on the song. In both cases, though, it adds to the emotional heft of an album that is wonderfully catchy and startlingly intelligent.
Critic Reviews

Magnet (p.94) - "Clearly, the goal of SILENT SHOUT is to freak you out: Vampiric vocals turn the title track and 'Neverland' into terrifying night-vision techno trips, starting the album with two tone-setting tracks of aural pointillism like a satanic, synth-wielding Seurat."
CMJ (p.5) - "[The band] marries icy atmospherics and layered synth haunts with hyper-processed vocals and click-'n'-pulse programming."
Clash (magazine) (p.76) - "The album was a dramatic leap forward into uncharted sonic territory, while Karin's incomparable vocal performance fronting a perfect set of deeply haunted electronic arrangements."