A1 A tooth for an eye
A2 Full of fire
B1 A cherry on top
B2 Without you my life would be boring
B3 Wrap your arms around me
B4 Crake
C1 Old dreams waiting to be realized
D1 Raging lung
D2 Networking
D3 Oryx
E1 Stay out here
F1 Fracking fluid injection
F2 Ready to loose

The new record from The Knife is not as easy to love and embrace as their earlier releases. The sound has changed once more and is less melodic and the analogue sounding synths are scarce. The new material is more rythm oriented with alot of tribal and world music influences. The rythms are flavored with distorted sounds, chirps and tweeks. It is only Karins voice that ties this new record to their previous work. Sometime it reminds me of We are the world, but mostly I think of Peter Gabriels movie score Passion from the Scorcese movie The Last Temptation Of Christ.

Some songs like A cherry on top diverts totally from the pop-formula and is more noise, drone oriented. The length of the songs are also longer then ordinary pop-songs and most songs are  between 6 - 10 minutes long. The instumental droner Old dreams waiting to be realized is the longest song with it's 19 minutes.

Still there are some really good songs on Shaking the habitual. My personal favorite is Stay out there. I also really like the single A tooth for en eye, Full of fire and Raging lung.

This is another example of interesting and early electro music from USA. Defcon was released in 1986 and made by two DJ's (Rob Hatcock & Frank Anobile) and a good looking performer, musician named Dino Esposito. Today Rob and Frank are legendary DJ:s in their hometown Las Vegas and Dino had a couple of hits (Summer girls, Romeo) under his own name in the late 80's and early 90's.

The song Defcon is hard hitting with a very heavy bass. The slow tempo and pounding bass is reminiscent of New Beat, but lacks acid elements. The song's use of vocal samples about war stuff does also make me think of Paul Hardcastle's hit 19 from 1985.

I love that you get snippets of vocal and drum samples on the b-side of this record. Very nice if you wanna make your own remix or steal the sounds for your own projekts. It would be nice if this practise would get a revival.

I bought my copy through Tradera and payed 4,94 €.

A  Batman (The original swing)
B  R-Cop (Who-R-U)

There was a bit of Batman-mania in 1989 when Tim Burton released his version of the dark knight of Gotham city. Prince provided a soundtrack and the 'bat-signal' was printed on just about everything. Just as the 'smiley' during the acid-frenzy during the same period.

The bat-craze also hit Miami where producers Lawrence Davis, Joseph Louis Stone & Paul Klein (a.k.a. DSK or The Fly Boys) did a electro, Miami bass, version of the Batman theme from the tv-series from 1966-1968.

B.O.S.E. combination of comicbook super hero and drum sounds from a Roland TR-808 is very hard not to fall in love with for a nerd such as I. This is funny and funky, with a electronic finnish.

And the fun continues on the b-side with more electro and movie samples. R-Cop (Who-R-U) was originally relesed in 1988 and is filled with sounds and samples from the movie Robocop.

Let's do the batdance, electro syle with the original swing!

A  Controlled transmission
B  Nothing can't go wrong

This is a German projekt by Bernd Friedmann and Frank Hernandez from the early 90s. The two songs on this release are rather heavy and slow and the beat is reminiscent to New Beat. The sound also bear some likeness to what Lassigue Bendthaus did on Automotif.

I really like this release and both songs are equally good for the dance floor, if you enjoy slower beats. Really cool electronic music.

I bought my copy through Discogs and payed 13,89 €.