The Knife’s Olof Dreijer and Mt. Sims share “Hybrid Fruit,” announce joint project

Olof Dreijer, best known as one half of The Knife with his sibling Karin Dreijer, has revealed details of a new collaborative album with the Berlin-based, Wisconsin-born DJ, producer, and performance artist Mt. Sims. Souvenir will be released June 9 through Rabid Records, the label formed by the Dreijers, and today sees the drop of its first single “Hybrid Fruit.” Hear it below.

The album’s genesis came during the creation of Tomorrow, In A Year, a 2010 soundtrack for an opera composed by The Knife, Mt. Sims, and PlanningToRock. The Dreijers and Mt. Sims were asked by a New York-based organization to create new music using one of the first steel drums ever made by the instrument’s creator, the Trinidadian artist Ellie Mannette.

Rather than seek formal training in an instrument with which they had no experience, Dreijer and Sims approached the steel drum from an amateur’s perspective, using elements like ball bearings and water to create sound. “We tried to find our own thing,” Dreijer said in a press release. “That’s usually our way around using an instrument that has been heavily exoticized and appropriated.”

While The Knife broke up in 2014, Olof Dreijer reunited with Karin this year to co-produce a number of songs on Karin’s new Fever Ray album Radical Romantics. Listen to Karin discuss the making of that record on the 81st episode of The FADER Interview.