(((withoutsound)))

This is not a plea to download Mozilla Firefox. If you are still using Interneural Exploder as your main browser you are probably not reading this anyway. (Really, though, download Firefox. It’s good. While you’re there, get DTA to go with it.)

Nah, this is a petition to prepare yourself. A petition to prepare yourself for summer. So find your flip-flops, grab your goggles, and get ready for some euro pop fireworks from sweat-inducing Swedes The Knife and Firefox AK.

We’re going to get messy this summer.

Now we’ve talked about The Knife before, specifically their excellent 2004 album Deep Cuts and Heartbeats which Jose Gonzalez covered wonderfully on his equally great, but for an entirely different reason, Veneer (You download both versions here and here). But when I stopped in at Pet Sounds in Södermalm on my recent visit to Stockholm, the kids in the store were rocking out to The Knife’s newest, Silent Shout, which had just been released. As I thumbed through the Pelle Carlberg and Wan Light, I remembered that scene in High Fidelity except I moved it to Scandinavia in and put myself in the store… using only the power of my mind!

So yeah. I bought it. Five copies, actually. One for home, one for the car, one for work, one for that special someone (Who could it be? Could it be you?), and one just in case. Oh, it’s good. It’s real good. It makes me wanna shake, shout, and break into a sweat. Not the sweatin’ to the oldies with Richard Simmons kinda sweat, more like the hot, humid Midwestern summer night with too many covers and I’m pretty drunk kinda sweat.

I also bought 4 copies of Firefox AK’s Madame, Madame! because it is madame, madame good. The AK is not Avtomat Kalashnikova, it’s Andrea Kellerman, the former lead singer of UK trip-hop group Anamorphic, but she does have a fair amount of rapid fire action. In fact, she’s like the bizarro version of Annie and Madame, Madame! will split your Speedstick.

I suggest starting out with FFAK and and when you’re worked into a good lather, sweat it out on back porch with a beer while staring at the pollution and listening to The Knife.

Anywho, what do I know. I just bought 7 too many copies of CDs. Judge for yourself.

• Listen to The Knife’s Silent Shout
• Listen to The Knife’s Forest Families
• Listen to Firefox AK’s Madame, Madame!
• Listen to Firefox AK’s Cardiac Arrest

Buy Silent Shout from or .