Karin Dreijer Andersson, one-half of brother-sister duo The Knife, will release her debut solo record under the name Fever Ray early next year.

Karin is responsible for some of the production work, but she is backed up by a crack team of studio boffins from her native Sweden. Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid have co-produced half of the record, whilst Christoffer Berg (who was involved in mixing both Deep Cuts and Silent Shout) will lend his skills to the other half. Berg is the man behind lead-off single "If I Had A Heart", which was released digitally today. (Those wanting a sneak peek of Karin's hymnal droning can stream it from Fever Ray's Myspace page.)

For more of an insight into the fairly secretive project, we caught up with Karin's co-producer Van Rivers by e-mail to chat about the collaboration.

How did your collaboration with Karin come about?

It was actually through Olof, Karin’s brother and the other part of The Knife. He's a good friend of Pär Grindvik and Nina at the label me and Peder (The Subliminal Kid) release on, Islands & Islets/Stockholm LTD. Olof had heard some of our work and seen us play live, and when Karin asked him if he had any producer tips for the project, he mentioned us. We sent Karin some music and from there it started rolling.

Did you work together in the studio, or were you just sending files back and forth?

Karin had made some rough demos before we started working together. We re-recorded most of the stuff she'd created in her studio, kept some and and added things we thought would improve the sound we wanted to give to her songs. We had a couple of sessions together with Karin in our studio—some productional and some vocal recording—but for the most part we worked alone and then sent her what we'd done.

Was it an easy working relationship?

It was really easy and smooth to work with Karin. She is very professional, talented and knows exactly what she likes/dislikes but is still very open to new ideas. For us it was a dream come true to get the chance to work with her and we were a bit "star struck" at first to be honest. But, after meeting Karin a couple of times we became good friends and found the work flow a lot more easily.

What can we expect from your half of the record?

Well, if you ask me, our half is definitely the dirtier part. We focused a lot on creating an analogue, kind of live feeling sound. We recorded a lot of it live to make it sound natural, experimented with recording playback from different speakers in different rooms, and also used a lot of analogue synths and drum machines. We kept almost all of the noise and glitch to give it that "dirty machine" flavour. I feel there is a connection to what we do when we make our own music, especially sound-wise, but this is more a pop album, even though a couple of songs are really great to dance to.

Do you plan to tour with her after the album has been released?

During the spring of 2009 we will go on tour with Karin and we are currently doing pre-production for the live show. Dates are yet to be confirmed.

Rabid Records will release Fever Ray on March 23rd, 2009. 29 Comments