The Knife Releasing Charles Darwin-Inspired Opera Score

Swedish electronica duo the Knife are set to return -- and they've seemingly evolved, in name and in practice. Based on the life of Charles Darwin, they'll release 'Tomorrow, in a Year,' which is the music stemming from the opera they were recently commissioned to write by the Danish performance group, Hotel Pro Forma. This will mark the first proper follow-up to 2006's breakout 'Silent Shout' and is set for a Feb. 2 release via digital outlets, followed by a physical release set for Mar. 9. The album contains 16 tracks that span two discs.

As ambitious a task of writing any opera sounds, the Knife worked with a bevy of different influences, including British biological theorist Richard Dawkins, producer/DJ Mt. Sims and progressive "pop opera" musician Planningtorock. Olaf Dreijer of the Knife even attended a field recording workshop in the Amazon to capture audio.

"At first it was very difficult as we really didn't know anything about opera," Dreijer said in a released statement. "We'd never been to one. I didn't even know what the word libretto meant. But after some studying, and just getting used to opera's essence of pretentious and dramatic gestures, I found that there is a lot to learn and play with. In fact, our ignorance gave us a positive respectless approach to making opera. It took me about a year to become emotionally moved by an opera singer and now I really do. I really like the basic theatrical values of opera and the easy way it brings forward a narrative. We've approached this before in the Knife but never in such a clear way."

'Tomorrow, in a Year' first debuted in Copenhagen on Sept. 2, with more dates lined up in Athens, Greece, Stockholm and Munster. The first available track, 'Colouring of Pigeons,' is currently available for free download on the band's website. The Knife's Karin Dreijer-Andersson, whose recently enjoyed success for her solo project Fever Ray, explained the song's origins on her website.

"The title is taken from Charles Darwin's studies of pigeons," she said. "A breakthrough of his examinations, coming home after The Beagle trip, it is when he started to discover the genetics transferred within generations. It is a track maximizing the results of his studies. I thought of the "diversity of everything," something we have discussed a lot with Hotel Pro Forma, and a non-hierarchical way of seeing things. All the small details he studied and made notes of, like a pile of ants, an anthill. Also a feeling of seeing things for the first time, overwhelming and shaken, but not afraid."

Sounds like this is giving a whole new meaning to the term "deep cuts."