A Closer Listen
Belgian-Iraqi trio Use Knife resurrects the grand industrial tradition of pairing political indictment with intense percussion, producing an extremely danceable and meaningful record. The influence of Front 242 can be heard, along with Nitzer Ebb; the listening experience is a delight, the intellectual experience a boon.
This is unfortunately the perfect time for the album to be released. Although the songs were written before He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named took office, the exposure of American hypocrisy on the world stage is apt. “You have two faces and that hurts us both,” intones Saif Al-Qaissy on “Freedom, Asshole.” But the problems are not confined to America; the vocalist-percussionist fled Iraq due to war, a harrowing experience related on the opening track. “How does the soul sleep tonight?” he asks in the chorus. (One can read the English translation of the lyrics by clicking the lyric tab on Bandcamp.)
Is it wrong to dance as one cries, or to dance in anger? One might say that it is necessary, that to give up dancing is to abandon life. This is the tension that exists in all political-industrial music. The electronics of Stef Heeren and Kwinten Mordijck are not dehumanizing, but re-humanizing, restoring a sense of dignity among the debris. In “A Reckoning,” the only words are “We are lost / Why me,” but the musical framework is energizing. Traditional Arabic dohola, darbuka, tar, daf, raq and kishba add to the authencity; the connection formed across countries is crucial to the understanding of the theme, amplified by the presence of Uganda’s Spooky-J (Nihiloxica).
The tensions come to a head in the title track, as English pokes through for the first time, as if to underline the importance of the words to the Western audience. “We’re all out here in the open,” declares Al-Qaissy. “All eyes on us.” It would be easy to mishear the track’s conclusion, as it seems a statement of defiance ~ “we’ll never give up” ~ until the final, whispered words sneak in ~ “the status quo.” The track dissolves into beatless abstraction, courtesy of Jerusalem in My Heart’s Radwan Ghazi Moumneh: a sonic metaphor.
The LP closes with “Che Mali Wali,” a traditional Iraqi song in a new form. Perhaps this is what is needed: old wisdom, respected traditions, eternal philosophies, in order to form a new world from the old. Society is in a time of dissolution; the intercontinental collaborations of Use Knife model a different approach. (Richard Allen)
Mon Mar 24 00:01:38 GMT 2025