by Will Butler

On Feb. 2, The Knife will release a studio recording of its opera Tomorrow, In A Year, an 80-minute piece about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma commissioned the Swedish sibling duo to write the music last year, with help from the dance-rock group Mt. Sims and an experimental artist known as Planningtorock. The opera originally premiered on Sept. 2 at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. The Feb. release will be a digital download, while the album will be available on two discs starting Mar. 10.

Hotel Pro Forma describes Tomorrow as "a new species of electro-opera." In composing the music, The Knife's Olof Dreijer infused the songs with sounds he recorded while doing research for the piece in the Amazon. What you get is a hybrid of the electronic and the natural world. From what we've heard of it, the opera is a strange and interesting creature. NPR producer Lars Gotrich says Tomorrow sounds like it's from "an ancient future where synths replace strings." Here's a clip from the production:

You can see a live performance of Tomorrow, In A Year in Athens, Greece, and Stockholm, Sweden this month, and again in Germany in June, with more dates TBA..