Romarna Campbell

More than two decades after reshaping electronic music as one-half of The Knife, Swedish avant-pop artist Fever Ray brought their radical sonic vision to Sydney Opera House at Vivid LIVE 2024 for their highly anticipated Australian debut. From the spectral synth beats of The Knife to the shapeshifting pop soundscapes of their solo work, Swedish avant-garde alchemist Karin Dreijer – aka Fever Ray – carved a singular, uncompromising path through 21st-century electronic music. Following The Knife’s wildly successful third album, Silent Shout – named by Pitchfork as the best album of 2006 – Fever Ray released their 2009 self-titled debut, a modern masterpiece of haunting, left-field electro-pop. It was followed by 2017’s Plunge, which found Dreijer embracing their newfound queer identity through a set of irresistibly sensual, alien pop songs.

The elusive Fever Ray haunts the Uckange Blast Furnaces for a "Passengers" session - an hour of music that feels like a waking dream, offering a total immersion into the electronic labyrinth of the album "Radical Romantics". Listening to Fever Ray is much like taking a ride on a ghost train: an exhilarating experience where thrills, pleasure, surprise, and a sense of letting go all collide. Finding a venue worthy of hosting this "Passengers" session was essential - and the Uckange Blast Furnaces, a former industrial plant now transformed into a space that feels untethered from time proved to be the perfect setting. Accompanied by four creatures as strange and fascinating as the world she inhabits, Fever Ray fills this abandoned site with sweeping electronic soundscapes. It is a session that drifts between dream and nightmare, in which the Swedish artist takes on the roles of a lost soul, a banshee, and a poltergeist. Filmed on August 26, 2023, at the Uckange Blast Furnaces in Moselle.