Pitchfork

Underrated Swedish rockers First Floor Power don't seem to mind getting the Silent treatment. Lead singer Sara Wilson let her synth-pop side lead her forward on 2006's Love & Youth for the Knife's Rabid label, but her long-running main band gets back to the guitar-driven stuff (with a few synths still) on "The Jacket", the first single from their forthcoming Don't Back Down!. In this remix, Knife half Karin Dreijer Andersson takes the song back to the electronic sphere, which sounds like some kind of mythological underworld, or else maybe a planet-destroying space station. Atop a basic New Order-esque house beat and some other crackles of percussion, some synths plink rapidly, ominously, while others coo gently. The Knife's familiar (strange) vocal effects give Wilson's vocal an edge of menace: "If your jacket is getting too heavy for you/ Please, let me take it off." From there, Dreijer constructs a house of unusual sounds-- Wilson's frosty breathing, her wordless ululations-- and proceeds to haunt the shit out of it. Not all power currupts: Don't Back Down! is now streaming in its entirety on First Floor Power's MySpace page.

[from Don't Back Down!; due 05/05/08 in Sweden and 05/23/08 in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on Crunchy Frog]