Back in June, Tom Hawking conducted a rare interview with the quietly spoken Swede, Karin Dreijer Andersson. Perhaps more recognisable as the singer of The Knife, Andersson had recently released an ethereal, downbeat solo project under the name Fever Ray.

In the interview, we asked her about her stunning live show:

"At first I worked with a five-piece band, and we had a lot of scenery, stage sets, design on stage – we worked a lot with more theatrical elements like light and smoke, and we also had costumes and masks, so we try to work and experiment with the concert format to see what you’re able to do on a stage, and use a lot of things that people are already using in theatres, but not so many use on music concerts.

Has the stage show evolved over time?

Yes, absolutely. We are developing it for every show, both sound and visuals. We have also started to work with incense also, to have it smell a certain way. That is very hard on festivals. [laughs quietly].

I can imagine.

We can control everything but the wind! It’s quite hard for us because we use quite a lot of smoke, so now we need smoke machines throughout the whole festival.

The album sounds very intimate and personal – has it been difficult to work with other musicians to reproduce it live?

No, I don’t think so. [By the time we played it live] it was finished, mixed and mastered, so that’s not hard. I think music should be personal and intimate, and I think I’ve found people who are very careful about the music but still put a lot of themselves into it, so it works really well live."

--

With a DVD of the live set in the workd, Andersson has now announced the digital release of a live performance in Sweden, the cryptically named Live in Luleå. It features every track from her debut, as well as cover versions of Nick Cave's "Stranger Than Kindness" as well as Vashti Bunyan's "Here Before", which were not originally on the record. The album will be made available in Australia through etcetc on December 25th. But you don't have to wait that long.

We present to you Live in Luleå in full. Click on the Radio Player over there in the right hand column and away you go. Tell us what you think.