État Coupable by Use Knife

Since releasing their acclaimed debut album 'The Shedding of Skin' in 2022, Belgian-Iraqi trio Use Knife have only deepened their collaboration; if its predecessor was a way to reconcile the process of meeting and working together, 'État Coupable' is a genuine fusion of culture and politics that merges each of their skills in profoundly new ways. Vocalist and percussionist Saif Al-Qaissy, who fled Iraq because of war, is even more vivid with his storytelling this time around, layering poetic images and anecdotes that help humanize a complex, misunderstood narrative. Singing in Arabic over analog synths, samples and instrumental bursts from Stef Heeren and Kwinten Mordijck, Al-Qaissy tells a necessary tale of freedom, responsibility and the gulf between the Eastern and Western mindset. Even the instrumentation itself reflects this constant friction; intuitively muddling distorted industrial textures and jerky EBM pulses with brittle Iraqi rhythms and tonalities, Use Knife devise their own distinct harmony against the dissonant global backdrop.

This time around the trio approached their craft more organically, jamming relentlessly and working together to figure out an over-arching statement rather than present a loose collection of tracks. On their previous album, the songs had mostly materialized from ideas Mordijck and Heeren had already partially developed, since they had already worked together extensively. And after almost four years of experimentation, Use Knife has evolved: Al-Qaissy's contribution is now far more upfront, and the trio are able to reproduce the boundary-pushing live energy of their performances, adding more singing, more percussion, more woodwind and further elements from Al-Qaissy’s Iraqi background. Mordijck and Heeren handle the electronics, using a Verbos modular system and various classic synths, FX boxes and drum machines, while Mordijck also plays saxophone - baritone, alto and a bizarre tube sax, to be exact. As well as handling the vocals, Al-Qaissy shows his expertise with a variety of Arabic percussive staples such as the dohola, darbuka, tar, daf, raq (or riq) and kishba.

Opening with 'Demain Sera Mieux', the album starts as it means to go on, boldly juxtaposing a heavy Iraqi dance rhythm - the 10/16 Jorjina beat - with synth and sax flourishes that curve around the central groove. Saif takes his place comfortably at the front and center, soberly recounting his experience of a terror attack back home in Iraq, when he was rendered helpless by the air pressure on the ground. And the trio shift into a more sardonic mode on 'Iraqi Drum Set', sampling conversations they had about Iraqi instruments and their pronunciation - for example the raq - and chiseling a daf rhythm into a powdery industrial stomp. Nihiloxica's Spooky-J shows up to provide live drums on 'Freedom, Asshole', and although it's the only track on the album not to focus on Al-Qaissy's percussion, he uses the opportunity to deploy his most barbed vocal performance. Improvising from a lyric he wrote, he grapples with the privileged Western mindset directly, offering a distorted truth: no one is free until we are all free.

Stef Heeren sings in English on the album's title track, addressing those that need to be addressed in the Western World's lingua Franca. "All eyes on us," he repeats. "Dogma upon dogma, how on earth did we get to this point?" His words cut through the mix like post-punk chants, echoing over acidic, technoid squelches and distorted 4/4 thump before the track dissolves into a pensive ambient soundscape provided by Jerusalem in My Heart's Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, who also mixed the record. It's a pivotal moment that contextualizes the meaning of the title itself: is it the nation state that's culpable, or are we all trapped by the guilty state of mind? These ambiguous, multi-layered references are woven into the fabric of the album, but it's not all so subtle. On 'Kadhdhaab', which means "liar" in Arabic, Al-Qaissy is far more straightforward, addressing the world's power structures and begging his parents to provide answers that never come.

And although 'État Coupable' doesn't pretend to offer a solution, there's a hopeful philosophy at its core. Born from active communication between artists from distinctly different places, the album celebrates the act of collaboration, and the learning process it can prompt. Use Knife isn't an isolated project, by any means - the band are strengthened by relationships that have intensified from release to release. Legendary mastering engineer Heba Kadry - who's worked extensively with Moumneh - handles the mastering, and Lebanese designer Farah Fayyad returns to provide graphic design. Meanwhile multidisciplinary artist Youniss Ahamad, who's worked side by side with Use Knife for years, takes a poignant still image from his video for 'Freedom Asshole' to create a lingeringly symbolic cover.

Text by John Twells

Use Knife is the raw synergy between Iraqi vocalist/percussionist Saif Al-Qaissy and Belgian musicians Kwinten Mordijck and Stef Heeren. They tell a necessary tale of freedom, responsibility and the gulf between the Eastern and Western mindset. Even the instrumentation itself reflects this friction; intuitively muddling distorted industrial textures and jerky EBM pulses with brittle Iraqi rhythms.

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