In a highly abstract and collaborative project, Danish theatre experimentalists Hotel Pro Forma contacted iconoclastic Swedish electro pop duo The Knife, comprised of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer, with the initial catalyst that
In a highly abstract and collaborative project, Danish theatre experimentalists Hotel Pro Forma contacted iconoclastic Swedish electro pop duo The Knife, comprised of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer, with the initial catalyst that would spark Tomorrow, In A Year. The idea was for an opera based on Charles Darwin and the development of natural selection – as published in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species – to be composed by the two musical revolutionaries. To further explore the operatic arts, The Knife looked to collaborate with the UK’s Planningtorock and US’s Mt Sims to convey a haunting electronic pop aesthetic via diverse and challenging inspirations. The result is an unconventional electro opera created from an amazing archive of newly formed sounds – including warped feedback and artificial animal noises – envisioned by the four artists to represent 90 minutes that span life on earth.
Karin Dreijer Andersson: We were commissioned in 2008 so we’ve been working on this project for one and a half years. Working with Hotel Pro Forma was really inspiring because they leave a lot to the listener. It’s very abstract and possible to interpret their work in many different ways.
Olof Dreijer: The Darwin subject was very interesting, politically, because there’s such a big difference between what Darwin actually wrote and how he’s been interpreted. I feel he gives a feeling of anti-hierarchy, yet it’s been interpreted as super-hierarchical, and thus the tension is very interesting. It’s such a huge subject, and one way to portray this diversity is to give it different angles, so that’s why we invited Mt Sims and Planningtorock. One of my first ideas was to make music completely out of fish recordings. But that was super-direct. It was animals sounding like drum machines and that wasn’t about evolution. Evolution is about everything.
Planningtorock: It’s a process of shedding, getting over the initial straight-up ideas. In doing so we would create brand new sounds; the outcome was not what we expected. I found it fascinating how intuitive it became even though we were in such unfamiliar territory
Mt Sims: All of us worked a lot with feedback, and we organised these feedback structures into some kind of order. After listening to all the different things that were going on we started thinking about the chronology and what Darwin as a naturalist was trying to explain. We were thinking about what may have influenced him and his thought process. It was about what he had committed to both in writing and living, rather than pure fact. After all, that’s the beauty of the whole piece. It is an interpretation.
Tomorrow, in a Year, featuring Hotel Pro Forma with music by The Knife in collaboration with Mt Sims and Planningtorock is on show at the Barbican Theatre, July 27 and 28, 2010.
The album, Tomorrow, In A Year, is out now.
