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passionate-reply · 3 years

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This time on Great Albums, I talk about an album that actually isn’t older than I am for a change! Enter the spooky, haunted forest of The Knife with me, and find out why it was Pitchfork’s Album of the Year in 2006! Full transcript after the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be tackling an album that’s more recent than anything I’ve done on Great Albums before, but it’s still old enough to start being considered a classic: The Knife’s Silent Shout, released in 2006, and hence seeing its fifteenth birthday in 2021. Silent Shout is a bit special to me, insofar as it was an album I loved as a teenager, back when it was still pretty new, and it was probably the first album I really fell in love with that wasn’t significantly older than I was. I was quite surprised when I eventually learned just how beloved Silent Shout is among music aficionados. This album has been lauded in critical circles, recommended as a “patrician” essential, and even considered one of the greatest electronic albums of all time! So, what’s the fuss about?

Before Silent Shout, The Knife were significantly closer to a conventional electronic pop duo. Their biggest claim to fame was the track “Heartbeats,” which scored some exposure after a cover of it was featured in a TV ad.

Music: “Heartbeats”

I like to think that “Heartbeats” contains the seeds of what’s great about Silent Shout, with its grinding synth backing and vocalist Karin Dreijer’s affecting wail. But its indie-pop brightness is something distinctively absent from their follow-up. Contrary to what might’ve been expected from an up-and-coming pop act, the sibling duo hunkered down in the studio and set about making something stranger and more exotic. On the technical front, they stripped the production down to its bare essentials, using just digital rhythms and two synthesisers to achieve everything we hear on the album. Stylistically, they took their sound into moody, atmospheric territory, imbuing it with this eerie, claustrophobic ambiance. It’s the musical equivalent of Frankenstein emerging from Mary Shelley’s mind, while the dreary “Year Without a Summer” had poisoned the world around her.

Music: “Silent Shout”

The title track here is also the opener, and introduces us to the frightful world of Silent Shout without mercy. This track is dominated by a powerful contrast of sound: low, thrumming bass, and these quick, but delicate and meandering synth arpeggios, carrying a distinctively Scandinavian flair. This bewitching synthesis of musical ideas makes sense in light of the diverse influences of the two siblings who made up The Knife: Instrumentalist Olaf Dreijer was strongly influenced by dance styles like house, trance, and progressive techno, as well as ambient electronic music, whereas vocalist Karin Dreijer was interested in guitar-based popular music, as well as the distinctive folk traditions of their native Sweden. Not unlike the Pet Shop Boys, they’ve got a wide gap between their influences, but that only serves to intensify the uniqueness of their work, which strikes listeners in a way the constituent musical parts of its heritage never could. Perhaps the most significant sonic feature of the album, though, is the extreme electronic distortions of Karin Dreijer’s voice.

Music: “One Hit”

If raw and everymannish vocals make music feel more in line with our everyday reality, the shocking and monstrous ones on *Silent Shout* render it a truly otherworldly work of art. While many people are quick to decry the “fakeness” of electronically mediated vocals--despite the fact that all art is, of course, artificial--I think Silent Shout proves, more boldly than anything else, just how uniquely powerful this musical tool can be in the right hands. Once you get past the sheer sonic force of the vocals, and their peculiar, skin-crawling timbres, you’ll find that most of the lyrical subject matter is actually painfully quotidian. “One Hit,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an all-too-normal “monster”: a domestic abuser, extracting and enforcing femininity and domestic servitude through the force of violence, dealing in “one hit, one kiss.” Sex, gender, and exploitation based upon them are among the album’s most central themes, and expressed harrowingly on tracks like “Na Na Na”:

Music: “Na Na Na”

Perhaps moreso than any other track on the album, “Na Na Na” is rendered borderline incomprehensible by vocal treatment--a trait magnified by its obviously meaningless title and chorus. But “Na Na Na” does have real lyrics, which tell the story of a life mediated by reproductive anatomy, defined by the rhythm of menstruation, coming from within, and the constant fear of sexual violence from without. It’s a tale of hidden anxiety, and experiences that go unseen and unspoken despite how common they are, making the haze of inscrutability laid over them all the more poignant. It’s clear that these issues are of high importance to Karin Dreijer, who has publicly described themself as “genderqueer,” despite both members of the band being remarkably sparing with all personal details. In another of the most striking vocal performances on the album, “We Share Our Mother’s Health,” Dreijer even gets to sing a duet with themself, and embody two distinct characters at once.

Music: “We Share Our Mother’s Health”

“We Share Our Mother’s Health” can be read in the light of gender and sex dynamics, as well, particularly if you’re willing to read its twin narrators as representations of masculinity and femininity. Personally, though, I think that’s a bit too easy, and really, a bit too cisnormative. I think the album is more interesting if we embrace the fundamental uncertainty of identity, and the transgressive queerness of it all. That said, I prefer to think of “We Share Our Mother’s Health” as a piece about capitalism--the endless toiling and scrounging for more material comfort and security, and the emptiness left behind when that proves to be no pathway towards true happiness. Besides, it’s not like sexism and the class struggle don’t feed off of each other in the end. This track’s sense of cacophony, with voices nearly battling to drown each other out, shows its more strident, aggressive, and downright angry side, which it delivers as powerfully as it does those moody atmospheres.

Silent Shout is the perfect title for this album, given its emphasis on voicing internal and private laments that go unheard--and voicing them with this terrifying sense of primal scream catharsis. While I initially wasn’t overly fond of the album art, it’s grown on me a bit now that I’ve seen it blown up to a larger size. This central disc shape is certainly evocative of a record or a CD, and its industrial-looking lattice structure, with a mottled, grimey-looking texture, helps conjure the impression of machine-age ennui.

I think a lot of the enduring appeal of Silent Shout is its sense of mystery. A lot of that mystery is deliberately crafted iconoclasm, and part of the art--while promoting the album, The Knife were photographed wearing sinister, elaborate beaked “plague doctor” masks, and their live performances from this period shrouded the band in darkness to obfuscate their appearances. They’ve refused to accept awards for their music or attend award ceremonies, including one memorable incident in which they sent costumed representatives of feminist organisation Guerrilla Girls in their stead. After Silent Shout, the duo created an opera based on Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 2009, and released one more studio album in 2013: Shaking the Habitual.

Music: “A Tooth For an Eye”

Shaking the Habitual received mixed reviews, and so far, has proven to be the siblings’ final work together, though they remain active as musicians independently, with Karin Dreijer recording under the moniker “Fever Ray.” Part of the great myth of Silent Shout is the fact that nothing else in their discography really quite approaches its specific sound, and sharp precision of conceptual focus. It’s like the album is tailor made to stand perfectly alone, outside of context, perhaps even outside of genre.

For many of us, this great legend of lightning-in-a-bottle genius is infinitely alluring. But I’ve never really bought into it too thoroughly myself. I obviously adore Silent Shout, and I think it’s a Great Album. But, unlike many people who have showered it with praise, often claiming that they don’t enjoy “electronic music” overall, I’ve always been interested in a lot of heavy, angry, creepy synthesiser-based music, and so I never thought too much of listening to this and liking it. People praise Silent Shout for being unlike anything else, but I think it sounds like a lot of post-industrial dark wave, like Attrition or Chris & Cosey, and its themes of feminist rage feel like a strong parallel to that of more recent stars of noise music such as Pharmakon and Lingua Ignota. But that’s not to devalue what Silent Shout does achieve! I think it *is* a unique album...in the way that a bat is a unique animal. Much as bats are not the only creatures who fly, but stand out for having developed that ability despite their mammalian heritage, Silent Shout doesn’t actually take direct inspiration from the earlier music it sounds the most like. It ended up there through the aforementioned eldritch alchemy, combining trance and folk and Kate Bush to get something new. That’s still something worth celebrating! Silent Shout needn’t be a perfect enigma to be a stirring masterpiece of an album.

My overall top track on Silent Shout, which I bet will be a popular choice, is “Forest Families.” It’s equal parts bleak and strangely anthemic, defined by both the unease of adapting to a plainer and harsher existence, outside the bounds of society, as well as the release that music itself provides to so many of us as we seek comfort. Since music is so important to me, I’m a real sucker for music about the importance of music, and it feels particularly well-placed on an album that’s a cathartic listen in so many ways. That about wraps this one up; thank you for watching!

Music: “Forest Families”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #the knife #fever ray #silent shout

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kristablogs · 4 years

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Keep your house clean without making bacteria and viruses stronger

Drug-resistant microbes are a serious concern. (CDC/Unsplash/)

Follow all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage here, including the most recent numbers, tips on how to make your own masks, and advice on what to donate for health care workers.

Understandably, everyone’s got SARS-CoV-2—the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic—on their minds. But even amidst a global emergency, we should take care not to forget the existence of the countless other microbes that surround us.

Not all bugs are bad (in fact, trillions exist on or inside us that we can’t survive without). But many of the microbes that do cause disease have developed the ability to thwart the drugs we use to treat them. In the United States alone, about 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections arise each year, resulting in more than 35,000 deaths—and the threat could worsen if we’re not careful about the cleaning products we use to battle the current viral outbreak.

“Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest global health challenges out there right now,” says Erica Hartmann, an environmental microbiologist at Northwestern University. “It’s important that we take this opportunity to critically evaluate how we’re cleaning.”

How antibiotic resistance works

To smack down SARS-CoV-2, you need little more than soap and water, or, in a pinch, an alcohol- or bleach-based disinfectant. All of these substances will break down many types of microbes through brute force, physically dismantling bits of their anatomy.

Some common household cleaners and disinfectants, however, include extra ingredients: antibiotics and antimicrobials. Companies toss these additives into the mix to (theoretically) up a product’s killing capabilities, but they’re only effective against certain bacteria and fungi. That means these chemicals aren’t just useless against the new coronavirus (and all other viruses, for that matter)—they could also cause drug resistance in other types of pathogens that could come back to plague us in the future.

Deployed in the right context (by a doctor treating a patient’s bacterial infection, for example), antimicrobials do work, often by disrupting a specific, vital piece of a microbe’s cellular machinery. And in the century since their discovery, these compounds have prompted an unprecedented plunge in infectious diseases worldwide.

But bacteria and fungi are highly adaptive organisms with diverse populations. A wave of antibiotics might wipe out most of them, but the rare microbes with genetic mutations that render them impervious to a drug will survive and multiply, seeding a new community of hardier, tougher-to-treat bugs. The more people use antibiotics—and the more they use them improperly —the more chances bacteria have to persevere.

Whenever unnecessary antimicrobials find their way into cleaning products and disinfectants, these microbes get another opportunity to adapt, Hartmann says. Sprayed liberally onto household surfaces, these potent liquids will linger and persist, all while losing potency—a perfect storm for tenacious bacteria to grab a foothold and multiply.

From there, the risks only grow. “The biggest concern is that those resistant microbes [themselves] are infectious,” Hartmann says. If drug-tolerant pathogens find their way into a human body, they’ll kick off an infection that’s more challenging to treat. (Weakened by virus, patients with bad cases of COVID-19 are often more vulnerable to bacterial infections, which can make the disease worse.)

Even benign bacteria with drug resistance can cause issues down the road. If these microbes mingle with other strains or species that do cause disease, they may end up exchanging genetic material that passes their tolerance on to others, Hartmann says.

Cleaning products spiked with antimicrobials aren’t the only culprits driving antibiotic resistance. These compounds are found in a dizzying array of commonplace items—and by and large, they’re not actually doing much to boost the sanitizing properties of the objects they’re in. Soap—a substance that’s already naturally good at fighting microbes—is an especially good example: It simply doesn’t need extra chemicals to do its job.

“There may be a conception out there that if chemicals are really strong, that must mean they’re better—that’s not necessarily the case,” says Ariangela Kozik, a microbiologist at the University of Michigan. “Throwing chemicals at everything is not going to fix the problem.”

Hartmann recommends paying close attention to any labels that say “antibacterial” or “antimicrobial.” Compounds can also lurk less prominently in ingredient lists. Some websites, like this one from the Green Science Policy Institute, provide some guidance on how to spot them.

Stick with the basics

There are a lot of products branded with marketing that plays into people’s fears about the pandemic, Kozik says. Instead of literally buying into the hype, we should trust the familiar, time-tested compounds we know will work to keep us safe. In this case, that means sticking to basics like soap, alcohol, and in some cases, bleach.

To keep pathogens like the coronavirus at bay, turn first to soapy suds and water—a combo that both damages microbes and removes them from surfaces. You can also spray or wipe objects with a disinfectant that’s at least 70 percent alcohol. Diluted bleach solutions work too, though neither Hartmann nor Kozik is as keen on these because they’re so harsh on human cells. (If you use them, keep the room ventilated—and please don’t mix them with other cleaning products.)

While microbes can develop resistance to drugs that target specific parts of their life cycle or anatomy, the same isn’t true of soap, alcohol, and bleach, which are general physical and chemical methods of disrupting bacteria and viruses, Hartmann says. Escaping an antibiotic might only require a microbe to modify the shape of a protein so a drug no longer affects it. Avoiding soap-based destruction, on the other hand, would require something far more drastic—on the order of growing an iron cage around its cell.

As many of us hunker down in our homes with hygiene on the brain, Hartmann recommends focusing cleaning efforts on commonly touched surfaces like doorknobs, faucets, and toilet flush handles to stem the spread of disease. That’s doubly true if anyone in your household has been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and may be at risk of shedding virus onto surfaces. But if not, there’s “no reason to go crazy” on the cleaning, Hartmann says.

It’s also possible to overdo it: In recent years, scientists have come to realize that grime, grit, and germs are actually pretty important for training our immune system during childhood. The beneficial bacteria that help our bodies function on a daily basis could suffer from overexposure to cleaning compounds.

COVID-19 aside, these are good principles to follow even when the world isn’t in the middle of a pandemic, Hartmann says. After all, our microscopic roommates aren’t moving out anytime soon.

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scootoaster · 4 years

Text

Keep your house clean without making bacteria and viruses stronger

Drug-resistant microbes are a serious concern. (CDC/Unsplash/)

Follow all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage here, including the most recent numbers, tips on how to make your own masks, and advice on what to donate for health care workers.

How antibiotic resistance works

Stick with the basics

COVID-19 aside, these are good principles to follow even when the world isn’t in the middle of a pandemic, Hartmann says. After all, our microscopic roommates aren’t moving out anytime soon.

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flawed-menagerie · 7 years

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A TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF VOLODYMYR ALBESCU

AS DESCRIBED IN HIS JOURNALS

YOUNG LIFE

Volodymyr was the fifth son of seven children in the Albescu family and the last to be born. His family were lesser noblemen in charge of a small piece of land in Thedrell. He was a bright lad who picked up quickly on his studies but always seemed to ask his elders too many questions and push his studies too far. When it was time to learn to check traps in the evening he would be off on the roof of the family home setting up a telescope for star gazing. When he was supposed to be eating dinner he would disappear off into the woods to sketch all of the grand and exciting creatures he encountered. He would make little notes next to the drawings as he learned more about what each doodad or fluff of feather was meant for it. As he got older the drawings and notes he took were getting more elaborate. It was still seen as innocent fun. He generally behaved as a fine young boy of noble breeding when he wasn’t off adventuring so his parents didn’t fuss much.

A NEW DISCOVERY

AN UNSETTLING REALIZATION

It wasn’t until an intimate encounter with death that Volodymyr shifted to a new obsession. He had been having a picnic in the wood with his grandfather when the old elf suddenly stopped talking. His face turned an odd hue and he kept wheezing and struggling to breathe. He had never realized that elves could die. He sat there frozen like a statue unsure of how to react to the situation. It was strange. The man had been there one moment and then gone the next just like that. How terribly peculiar. The memory was terribly vivid and burned into his mind. This situation had also provided him with a new trinket. His grandfather, who had always been fond of the youngest boy had insisted that his family ring be given to little Volodya instead of one of the more deserving and elder brothers.

AN IMPULSIVE EXPLORATION

Wanting to understand more about death, and on the other side of the coin what makes up someone’s essence in the first place the elf began to look for something that might be hidden underneath the surface. While on his adventures with his notebook in the woods he brought along a small blade and began to document the anatomy of any dead creatures he happened upon on in his hikes. But animals were animals, perhaps they were missing that thing that spark he had seen leave his grandfather. Unwilling to let a few rules and locked doors hold him back he began to frequent and explore nearby catacombs as well. He asked his parents for more research texts and old tomes that might have something he might have missed never giving a clear answer when asked. “What’s this all about?”

A NEW WORLD

MEETING DIMITRI

On one of his many trips to the catacombs he soon realized that he wasn’t alone. A sharp tinkling of a bell could be heard as he passed through the dark and into an area where a fresh body lay on a slab of stone. Each time it rang it felt like something deep within him was being tugged gently. Squinting in the dark he spied a Diminutive Fae like being who had his ear pressed against the lips of the dead elf inside. In one hand the stranger was clutching a glass bell that seemed to glimmer in the dark. This stranger gave a little start when it realized it wasn’t alone. He explained to the noble that he was a tender of spirits and a master of the undead arts. Intrigued and not at all bothered that he had been disrupted from his studies he begged the fairy to teach him about his abilities.

A GROWING FRIENDSHIP

Dimitri agreed to teach the elf about his kind of magic. About its dangers and its rituals. One of Dimitri’s favorite things to say was that “If you have an unbreakable will nothing is impossible” The pair couldn’t be more different. Volodymyr was Serious, Analytical, and preferred to break things down into digestible chunks. Dimitri was a spiritualist, Excitable, and looked at everything at a larger picture. Despite their differences they learned to play to each other’s strengths, and spent much of their spare time together.

One thing that was off limits in the lessons was the bell. Volodymyr was told he would need to learn to summon his own bell to Practice Necromancy. Each bell was unique to a bearer’s own energy, to use someone else’s was dangerous. Despite this warning Volodymyr focused his energy on learning how to dispel that rendered the bell unusable if in the wrong hands. He focused a lot of his time away from Dimitri learning more Magic in general. As the years passed Dimitri and Volodymyr grew close. For Volodymyr Dimitri was like a brother, better than a brother, but the young fae bore a complicated but deep seeded love for the odd elf.

THINGS FALL APART

A DIFFERENT SORT OF DISCOVERY

While off on one of his many journeys with Dimitri Volodymyr’s sister Sofia followed him to a cemetery and watched in horror as she watched her younger brother treat the dead with such ill respect, in her and much of society’s opinion. When word got back to Volodymyr’s mother she confronted the young man who was now 43 years old. They got into a horrible argument about morality and spirituality that eventually ended in news that he would be sent to live with distant relatives in Wepkiir so that he wouldn’t bring embarrassment upon the family name.

A HORRIBLE MISTAKE

Desperate and angry about the news Volodymyr spent the last few days he had with Dimitri lethargic and irritable. He was never going to see his friend again and this was going to be the last chances he had to break the spell on their bell and give it a ring. He stole the bell when Dimitri wasn’t looking and dispelled its protective magic. He crept over to the cadaver they had been practicing on controlling earlier and gave the bell a single ring. His body felt a great tug, but the ear pressed against the cold lips heard a single word that was completely muffled by the roar of Dimitri’s voice when he had realized what he had done. He scolded him for being so careless and that he had made the rule about the bell for his safety. Angry as well and ready to snap he squeezed the bell between his fingers and cursed at the fairy. Telling him that he was overprotective and being stupid. That he probably liked the bell more than himself. That he hated him. Furious he smashed the bell against the stone with the protective spell still inert. The last words that passed between his lips while he was still alive were I hate you, unless of course you counted the scream that ripped from his lungs as hundreds of diamond like shards of glass tinkled about him like rain. With Each hit ripped at his very being pulling his life essence from his body and ripping it to pieces.

THINGS GET PUT TOGETHER

LOSING DIMITRI

In a panic Dimitris mustered the energy to summon a new bell for himself. He rang it frantically trying to pull his friend back to his body before it was too late. But it was too late, the pieces of Volodymyr were too fragmented to stay put for long. He kept slipping through his fingers like sand. Holding his friend’s hand in his own he felt the gem of a familiar old ring in his palm. It gave him a foolish idea. He couldn’t think of anything that he wanted more than to fix this right now even if it meant he wouldn’t exist anymore. He would be more than willing to die for his friend but this would be something more. He pulled the retreating soul shards closer to himself and let out a soft sigh. He rended his own life into something that could only be described as a glue to hold those errant pieces together and bind them both into Volodymyr’s old family ring. This object would serve as a phylactery holding them together in this world until the day came where it should be destroyed. In a way they made a new being completely that night. The new Volodymyr had aspects of Dimitri’s personality and knowledge in him, as well as the problems and strengths that came along with being undead.

NOT QUITE THE SAME MAN

The ritual that had brought back his mind and his spirit did not do the same for his body. Broken and clearly a mess he allowed his parents to send him away to the frigid city. There he was able to preserve himself temporarily until he could work out the proper alchemical and magical means to maintain his mortal body. Despite his best efforts decades of minuscule rot is starting to take hold of his softer tissues. He does his best to preserve himself but he doubts he can keep it up indefinitely. Once he knew how to take care of his body without the cold he began to travel the world and study new places. All the while he is constantly studying new necromantic and medical techniques This is one of the only things he can do that reminds him of happier times back when he was really himself and he had a best friend at his side instead of within his very soul.

#original character #character study #lich #necromancer #alchemist

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