Knife, The In Collaboration With Mount Sims And Planningtorock - Tomorrow, In A Year (2LP)

The Knife never did easy, but Tomorrow, in a Year is bold even by their standards. Released in 2010 on Rabid Records, it grew out of a commission from Danish arts group Hotel Pro Forma to create an electronic opera inspired by Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The stage production premiered in 2009 at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, and the recorded version landed the following year as a full album made with Mount Sims and Planningtorock. It plays like a document of the whole experiment, not just a souvenir. You can hear the rigor and the curiosity in every strange, patient swell.

The first stretch feels like creation in slow motion. Tones creep in from the edges. Voices appear as texture rather than chorus. It is The Knife in a lab, testing elements and letting them react. Field recordings and synth drones rub together until the friction starts to sing. Mount Sims and Planningtorock help widen the palette, so this isn’t a typical band-plus-guests situation. It feels like a true three-way build, a study that avoids easy payoffs for mood and motion. You can picture the stage lighting shifting with the sound, bodies moving through fog, Darwin’s ideas humming under the action.

Then comes the showstopper. “Colouring of Pigeons” sits near the middle, an eleven minute bloom that finally opens into melody. Karin Dreijer’s voice rises through rippling percussion and strings that feel like a nest being woven in real time. Planningtorock’s presence is felt in the arrangement and the vocals that circle Karin’s lines. It is sumptuous and tender, one of those songs that suggests entire worlds just by repeating small gestures. The Knife shared it as a free download ahead of the album, and it still stands as the piece that sells the project to anyone who worries the word opera means homework.

The record pulls back into abstraction after that, and the tension between research and release becomes the point. Titles like “Seeds,” “Variation of Birds,” and “Annie’s Box” nod to Darwin’s notebooks and his family life. “Annie’s Box,” in particular, carries emotional weight, echoing the story of Darwin’s daughter Anne and the grief that shaped his view of nature and faith. The music doesn’t narrate the biography line by line, but it holds those themes in its bones. You hear processes, cycles, things mutating and settling into new forms. Beats are sparse and tactile. High tones flicker like insect wings. Bass rolls through like weather fronts.

The Knife were always interested in how sound hits the body, and Tomorrow, in a Year tests that idea with a scientist’s patience. Bits of birdsong and environmental texture sit against clean, almost clinical synths. It would be easy for a project this conceptual to dry out, yet it doesn’t. There’s heat in the tiny details and a sly sense of drama in how the collaborators use silence. Planningtorock’s ear for theatrical tension and Mount Sims’ rhythmic instincts give Olof and Karin new surfaces to push against. It feels like they built a modular instrument out of three minds and a stack of source material.

Critics handled it with a mix of awe and caution, which makes sense. It wasn’t Silent Shout part two. It asked for time and offered a very specific reward. Publications like The Guardian, Pitchfork, and Resident Advisor all dug into its ambition and singled out “Colouring of Pigeons” as the accessible gateway. Live, the piece made sense as theatre, and on record it holds up as a daring studio construction that documents a unique commission rather than attempting to retrofit it into pop.

If you’re a collector, Tomorrow, In A Year vinyl is an essential curiosity. The space in these mixes really breathes on a turntable. I still remember spotting a clean copy at a Melbourne record store and knowing it would anchor a whole weekend. The Knife vinyl tends to disappear fast, so if you want to buy The Knife records online, keep an eye on reputable shops and don’t sleep on restocks. It rounds out any shelf of The Knife albums on vinyl by showing a side of the duo that explains the leap to later projects and Karin’s Fever Ray work.

It is not background music. It is a world to enter, a patient listen that rewards attention and a bit of faith. For fans who like their electronic music with ideas and a physical sense of space, this album keeps giving. If you’re hunting vinyl records Australia wide or scrolling late at night for that Rabid Records spine, this is one to grab. It tells the story of evolution through sound, and it still feels alive.