The Knife
Silent Shout

The Stockholm Syndrome.

Or “nostalgia for the present”

The future seen from the past should resemble the present, don't you think?

Why, then, does it so often happen that, having the opportunity to enjoy ourselves situated in that future which is our present, that vision seems naive like the fantasy of a child too overwhelmed by the whirlwind of stimuli surrounding them?

The Swedish Cake

By a series of fortunate coincidences, I'm taking a musical stroll through the lands of Sweden, among the polychrome landscapes of pop territories.

And the question, in different forms, seems to resurface in every case.

Three records, three, released in the last few months, each generated by a different approach to handling the memorabilia from the vast trove of music from the past 40 years.

Each grappling with different slices of the gigantic cake.

In the realm of electro pop, the “The Knife” plunge their blade, carving out a generous slice with this “Silent Shout”.

The Silent Shout

And it is precisely with the title track that their third album opens. But where on earth are we?

This synth arpeggio has the same age as the improbable hairstyle I must have sported in a previous life (which also included the useless embellishment of a mane)

We are inside their third album, but I confess I was unaware of their existence until just a few days ago.

They are a duo. In photos, they wear black ultranasal masks stolen from an unlikely commedia dell'arte.

But the disguise is not enough to hide one of the two identities: we recognize her voice, the same one we heard in “What Else Is There” by Röyksopp.

Even though it will take on different, never “natural” tones across the 11 tracks. Always filtered, sometimes it recalls a pseudo-alien version of Kate Bush, in a “treated” falsetto as if to accentuate an absurd exoticism of digital postcard flavor with oriental touches of “The Captain” where a rarefied and extended electronic trail precedes its entrance.

And sometimes it will also be “tripled,” to surround, on the dance floor, the vaguely epic (and frankly not memorable) of the partner, within the groove of “We Share Our Mother's Health,” which forces me, funny enough, to a hint of dance. All around, percussive synthetic bounces and steel drums.

The pace is varied. Thus, the previous dynamism is followed by the brief lullaby of “Na Na Na” where the little girl returns to offer us her voice in a childish version. Perhaps to prepare us for the mishmash of “Marble House”, sneaked away from some album from the first half of the maligned ’80s (Human League? Help me, how many have I erased..)

The frantic marathon among the possible references balancing between the German sound and British synth-pop memories (often mixed within the same track) and glimpses that should appeal to those who enjoyed the latest Royksopp, ends with the next title, where the Swedish duo's personality seems to find maximum autonomy.

While listening to the essential treatment given to “Like A Pen”, I ask pardon from the admirers (I am among them) of the ingenious Plaid if I find myself thinking of a singable, less conceptual version, as if extracted for a lighter treatment, from the phenomenal “Not For Threes.”

Perhaps due to the goodwill inspired by the previous track, but even in the delicacy of “From Off To On”, liquid and whispered, I find more reasons to relax than to rummage through the database of déjà vu.

Symptoms of the syndrome

In the role of an unwitting passerby, captivated for the brief span of listening time, I have the impression of detecting some symptoms of the so-called "Stockholm syndrome": I am confined in a space not my own, subjected to conditioning, at the mercy of a bunch (well, the kidnappers are two, but how can we exclude accomplices, even if only fellow travelers or "bad teachers"?) that dictates its own rules with persistent nonchalance, forcing me to unnatural temporal regression.

I should put up some form of resistance, react based on simple observations: each of these sounds comes from the past, it is likely a product destined to sound enchanting for the young folks swarming in the evening from one club to another, blissfully unaware of the mold from which, for example, many synth arpeggios have been cleaned.

I can't like it, there are too many apparent naive aspects running through it.

Yet I'm listening to it again, 'this album.

I should attempt an escape, which again is as simple as pressing stop.

A great opportunity presents itself during the funny and unsettling grotesquely martial tempo of “One Hit”: I shouldn't endure it. I should be irritated, I think. And the kidnappers are too occupied with their amused staging to pay attention to me. Even if it comes only towards the end, it's the opportune moment to make a getaway.

And yet I remain here, waiting to hear once again the faint closing track, that “Still Light” always on the verge of evaporating like the outdated sound on which the two soft voices rest, now whispering. As if they suddenly realized that the game is over.

Nostalgia for the present

Returning to reality, to the present.

Far more unsettling than that future that the records they plundered seemed to evoke many years ago. An unease of a different kind, from which the youth from the land of Sweden seem to want to escape.

Balancing between a past, which for them exists only as a reservoir of suggestions, and a comfortably drawn future then.

Perhaps afflicted by a strange form of nostalgia.

Nostalgia for the present.

A present that, unlike the future, seems never to arrive.