On Thursday, a low-quality mp3 of the 10-minute first single from the Knife’s first album in seven years leaked onto the internet. Later that day, it was pulled down. The next day, the track’s epic, slightly NSFW music video popped up on a Swedish streaming site. Later that day, it was pulled down.
If you, like me, were cursing yourself for not listening to the song or watching the video while you had the chance, rejoice: this morning, “Full of Fire” finally arrived on YouTube. And it is a doozy. I’m not even going to try to unpack Marit Östberg’s affecting, politically-charged accompanying short film, but I will say the track itself is great–it finds the band diving even deeper into the propulsive, kraut-y zone they found themselves in on Silent Shout, eschewing hooks in favor of rhythm, dissonance, and lots of ring modulation. It makes me want to get into a car and drive, very fast.
Here’s a synopsis of the video from Örstberg herself.
The film ‘Full Of Fire’ started to grow as an embryo in the song´s lines ‘Who looks after my story’. Who takes care of our stories when the big history, written by straight rich white men, erase the complexity of human´s lives, desires and conditions? The film ‘Full Of Fire’ consists of a network of fates, fears, cravings, longings, losses, and promises. Fates that at first sight seem isolated from each other, but if we pay attention, we can see that everything essentially moves into each other. Our lives are intertwined and our eyes on each other, our sounds and smells, mean something. Our actions create reality, we create each other. We are never faceless, not even in the most grey anonymous streets of the city. We will never stop being responsible, being extensions, of one another. We will never stop longing for each other, and for something else.
