The Knife at the El Rey

I failed to mention that The Sounds are from Sweden in my last review. So it is ironic that the next show I go to happens to be The Knife who also hail from Sweden. The Knife are on a ultra mini tour consisting of 3 dates in the states (NY,SF, and LA). The line of people trying to get tickets outside was larger then Ladytron at Halloween and I got hit up by a bunch of people on the way in looking for extras. The El Rey recently was sold and renovated with an upgraded sound system that makes the it one of the better sounding L.A. venues. I went to the merchandise booth to check out what they brought over from the motherland and they had the first two Knife albums that were recently released which I scooped up. Interestingly they were out of men's t-shirts but the shirt was not that amazing anyways. After talking to the security guard for a bit regarding the status of digital cameras, I found out the opening band planningtorock had cancelled. Apparently planningtorock is a one woman show dressed in white with a movie screen and some crazy beats as she sings along. So after the wait, The Knife finally hit the stage and the temperature in the El Rey went up ten degrees. The Knife put on an amazing show that is in my top 5 of visual performances. The show is very derivative of other bands ie Kraftwerk, and Nine Inch Nails, but since they borrow from my favorite bands...it is allowed. The stage had a drop screen in front of the band that displayed various images as well as a projection screen behind the band that had another set of images. The Knife consists of a brother and sister duo Karin Dreijer Andersson & Olof Dreijer. The music is all pre recorded but Karin sings live and I could see her as she manipulated the controls changing the pitch of her voice during the songs. My pictures unfortunately do not do justice to the visual component of the show, but I highly recommend you check out the DVD when it comes out. I will get it for sure. But I leave you with a tiny youtube morsel.