Embedded Files
Use Knife is the exciting result of the raw synergy between Iraqi vocalist and percussionist Saif Al-Qaissy—who fled war-torn Iraq—and Belgian musicians Kwinten Mordijck and Stef Heeren, known for their passion for analog synths and organic wind instrumentation. As Al-Qaissy's Arabic vocals shape the contours of poetic imagery from his past, fierce synth sequences, distorted samples, and heavy Arabic percussion render their politically charged tracks emotively captivating and sonically disruptive.
The band tell a necessary tale of freedom, responsibility and the gulf between the Eastern and Western mindset. Even the instrumentation itself reflects this constant friction; intuitively muddling distorted industrial textures and jerky EBM pulses with brittle Iraqi rhythms and tonalities, Use Knife devise their own distinct harmony against the dissonant global backdrop.
Use Knife’s debut album 'The Shedding of Skin' was released in September 2022 by VIERNULVIER records and received critical acclaim by The Quietus, Mixmag and Knack Focus among others. In the wake of this record they played all over Europe and Canada at festivals such as Le Guess Who?, Sonic City, Videodroom, Grauzone, Botanique, Worm, Wrong Fest, Roadburn, Suoni Per Il Populo, Wave-Gotik-Treffen and We Are Open among others.
Additionally, ‘Peace Carnival’ was released on Morphine Records —a 10” remix EP featuring tracks from the debut album reinterpreted by Muqata’a مقاطعة, Zoë Mc Pherson, and Rabih Beaini.
More than a mere meeting of cultures from Eastern and Western backgrounds, their new album ‘État Coupable’ (March 2025) is a genuine fusion of culture and politics that merges each of the three band members’ skills in profoundly new ways. The album is mixed by Jerusalem in My Heart's Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, who also created the contrasting ambient 2nd part of the title track, while New York based engineer Heba Kadry (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nicolás Jaar) handles the mastering. Nihiloxica’s drummer Spooky-J, also laid down a post punk beat on first single ‘Freedom, Asshole’.
Known for their attention to detail at every level—from sound color to live performance and video — Use Knife have been collaborating with multidisciplinary artist Youniss Ahamad, who crafted a distinct visual language for the band. Alongside music videos and artwork that evoke rawness through direct and distorted imagery, he has also developed scenography and visuals that truly enhance their live show, creating “an all-embracing vortex that allows those experiencing it to plunge, headfirst, into a hypnotic state that veers between a dreamlike trance and a sensual workout.” (The Quietus)
Their radio show ‘Feeding The Gentry’ airs monthly on Palestinian Radio Alhara.
État Coupable
More than a mere meeting of cultures from Eastern and Western backgrounds, their new album ‘État Coupable’ (March 28, 2025) is a genuine fusion of culture and politics that merges each of the three band members’ skills in profoundly new ways.
The album is mixed by Jerusalem in My Heart's Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, who also created the contrasting ambient 2nd part of the title track, while New York based engineer Heba Kadry (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nicolás Jaar) handles the mastering. Nihiloxica’s drummer Spooky-J, also laid down a post punk beat on first single ‘Freedom, Asshole’.
The Shedding of Skin
The Shedding of Skin is Use Knife's debut album, released on Sep 30, 2022 on VIERNULVIER Records and mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem in My Heart, Hotel2Tango).
The album’s title, 'The Shedding of Skin', refers to the human survival instinct, the desire to leave war and disaster behind and build a new life in a completely different environment. The Shedding of Skin is all about the celebration of mankind's ability to connect, and not to divide.
According to The Quietus Use Knife "operates in a territory occupied by few. Instead of merely collecting and layering influences from the East and the West, they coalesce the disparate cultural and artistic strains into new expressions that belong to both worlds but are bound to neither of them.”
Peace Carnival
In an inspiring collaboration uniting artists from different corners of Europe and the Middle East, Palestine's Muqata'a, French-Irish Zoë McPherson, and Lebanon's Rabih Beaini have merged their creative forces to remix the Belgian/Iraqi band Use Knife's influential album 'The Shedding Of Skin'.
'Peace Carnival', releasing on Berlin’s Morphine Records, challenges the narrative around peace through its percussion, glitches, distortions, and Muslimgauze-esque minimalism to critique and rethink perceptions of justice and freedom.
This year, Carnival's usual satire and mockery should be directed towards the so-called and one-sided 'peace'.
Sowieso F***ed
On Oct 20, 2023 Use Knife released ‘Sowieso F***ed’, ‘F***ed على أي حال’ or ‘F***ed anyway’, a cynical anthem, set to a heavy 95 BPM beat and a disarray of fucked up samples & sounds, about 'ten little wanderers' trying to belong. The song, however, counts down undisturbed until all wanderers, newcomers, outsiders, aliens, squatters, strangers and trespassers disappear in a deafening noise.
The release was initiated before the brutal reality of the genocide happening in Gaza. Now, the cynical message must make way for solidarity with the Palestinian people. The profits made from this release and the accompanying t-shirt will therefore go to the Gaza Crisis Appeal of Oxfam.
Videos
Live dates
Radio
'Feeding the Gentry' w/ Use Knife on Radio alHara is a monthly radioshow by Belgian/Iraqi band Use Knife. Tune in every third Tuesday of the month!
We've also made mixes for or did interviews at NTS Radio, Rinse.fm, Kiosk Radio, n10.as, Radio Fantasia, FM4 Austria, Urgent.fm, Bruzz Radio, ...
Press
État Coupable (March 28, 2025)
Use Knife's 2nd album État Coupable (VIERNULVIER Records, March 28, 2025) had reviews, interviews, airplay and mentions from The Wire, The Quietus, BBC6's New Music Fix, KEXP, NTS, Inverted Audio, METAL Magazine, Ma3azef, A Closer Listen, Radio alHara, HUMO, Nowamuzyka, Rinse France, Songlines Magazine, Dansende Beren, Out Out, Wonderland/Radio 1, Klara Late Night Shift, Full Moon Magazine, Stereogum, Recorder, Forced Exposure, whypeopledance, Norman Records, Organ Thing, Son of Marketing, Polifonia (Polityka), White Light/White Heat, Ruptured Music, Roadburn playlist, Kalporz, New, Belgian & Good, Lyl Radio, KIOSK Radio, Gimic Radio, Bruzz, Outside Noise, Radio Scorpio, Blow Up, White Light/White Heat, A Jazz Noise, Canalb, Utility Fog, Majjem Radio, Rhythm Passport, Indiestyle, Monolith Cocktail, Rai Radio 3 Battiti, Dublin Digital Radio, Radio FM4 Austria, Doppelpunkt, ... Here you can find some quotes from the reviews.
The Wire
Coming up alongside the news of ceasefire violations in Gaza, the track underscores the futility of global attention and the irony of widespread awareness without meaningful action. It openly positions the Palestinian plight as representative of the broader Arab struggle for recognition as human beings amid racism and condemnation. (...) “Freedom, Asshole”, featuring Nihiloxica’s Spooky-J on drums, channels late post-punk aesthetics. Choppy breaks and distorted vocals evoke protest chants shouted through a megaphone. voices alternate between singing, proclamation and emergent calls, layered and distorted, capturing the frustrating redundancy of repeated declarations, elucidating the chaos and disorder while somehow evoking collective power.
The Quietus
Use Knife’s work, it seems, is to remind us that Max Weber’s idea of the state commanding a monopoly of violence is one that plays out daily on those who don’t fit, a notion that directly counter our fond imaginations of what liberal democracy is. As Heeren sings on the dizzying title track, if you just look, these matters are “out in the open”. État Coupable is heady, charged, sometimes fractious, but compelling stuff.
Inverted Audio
Videopremiere for Freedom, Asshole (feat. Spooky-J)
A furious synthesis of post-industrial decay and Mesopotamian ritual, ‘État Coupable’ unspools like a fevered hallucination of modern displacement and ancestral memory, dragging scorched electronics and spectral percussion into its tempest. Spanning seven tracks, the album portrays a dance between agony and transcendence, post-trauma manifesting as an exorcism of jagged noise, where post-punk tension dissolves into a mirage of distorted tradition.
METAL Magazine
Videopremiere for État Coupable (feat. Radwan Ghazi Moumneh)
The content of yet to be released single Kadhdhaab off the album, and its straightforward addressing of the world’s power structures, informs the meanings of État Coupable. Khadhdhaab speaks about the profound disappointment of youth as the ground crumbles beneath their feet. As children grow into young adults, they begin to see that the world is far from just, it is fractured by the forces of power and geopolitics. “We, the people, stand exposed and vulnerable in the open” add Use Knife.
Ma3azef
Saif showcases his skills on the opening track, set to Georgina's rhythm, with its unusual scale in the electronic scene, delighting our ears with rhythmic combinations of tambourine, khashaba, riq, and darbuka. Saif's vocals are superb, and the synths and sax reflect the anxiety and fear that pervade the lyrics.
The trio continues in the same vein on the track "Liar," where Saif reveals the wide range of his voice with a performance brimming with emotion and shuddering, enhanced by the distorted rhythms and synth lines.
What distinguishes the album most is its strong attachment to the present moment, whether politically or aesthetically. It does not drift into a vision of the future that is outdated, nor into nihilism and escapism. There is a sense of community among the band members that is easily accepted by the listener, and a discourse rooted in the present.
Use Knife possesses the magic of rhythm, the skill of sound design, and the ability to construct tracks with a tight dynamic. The album also brings a fresh sound to the scene, and confirms that our region is full of musical treasures, and Saif Al-Qaisi is one of them.
Read more (in Arabic)
+ top new music:
The album is dominated by a political tone and a sense of anger toward Western policies, which the band successfully conveys musically through percussion and synth sounds brimming with distortion, resulting in highly dynamic tracks that combine quality composition with unbridled improvisation. This is a sonically rich album that is a fresh take on the electronic scene.
Read more (in Arabic)
A Closer Listen
Belgian-Iraqi trio Use Knife resurrects the grand industrial tradition of pairing political indictment with intense percussion, producing an extremely danceable and meaningful record.
Rhythm Passport
Belgian-Iraqi trio Use Knife reimagine the traditional Iraqi lament “جي مالي والي” (Che Mali Wali – “What’s wrong with me?”) as a jagged, industrial invocation. Vocalist and percussionist Saif Al-Qaissy chants the refrain with raw urgency, threading it through distorted electronics, brittle drum patterns and Arabic percussion. It’s both a personal outcry and a defiant reclamation of cultural space.
HUMO
Humo's ear-pleasing ten: The very best records of the moment: A sultry, at times apocalyptic record that addresses the right-wing shift in the world.
Full Moon Magazine
Freedom, Asshole is understood as a reproach to the West. The angry beat complements the lyrics about the dominance of this world—how it sets the rules, writes the history, judges from afar without understanding. A very powerful text criticizes ignorance and is baffled by the turning away of eyes. The Western world has the luxury of choice—it doesn’t have to look at suffering; it can simply turn off the TV. (...) The album recontextualizes traditional Arab sounds into a Western electronic environment. The authenticity of the vocals and percussion enriches the already powerful synthetic beats. Use Knife’s politics of connection are communicated both forcefully and vulnerably. Neither East nor West has been brought closer by globalization; feelings of fear and distance still persist. The trio calls for change—for more understanding.
Read it in Fullmoon Zine #169 5/2025
Gonzo (Circus)
‘État Coupable’ is a rhythmically solid and danceable album that breaks away from post-punk, while at the same time flirting with unconventional electronic pop.
Nowamuzyka
“État Coupable” shakes, sometimes growls, and other times envelops us in a boundless whisper – it digs into the minds a multitude of forks, poses many question marks, without providing any answers. Use Knife transform into an increasingly stronger sound organism. With their new material, they have shown that they have a lot to share with the world, not only on a musical level, but also when it comes to words, which are full of emotional barbs, truths, helplessness and extraordinary sensitivity directed at a trembling reality that does not necessarily receive the same frequencies as the inner universe of Al-Qaissy and his friends. This is an album that you come back to for even more…
Songlines Magazine
The latest release from Iraqi-Belgian outfit Use Knife, sees Saif Al-Qaissy, Stef Heeren and Kwinten Mordijck plunging deeper into their fusions of European and Iraqi dance music to address the state of things. It’s a heavier move than their debut – gone are the synth-pop and new wave motifs, in their place come pulsing EBM and caustic production, leaving it as much Nurse with Wound as Nazem Al-Ghazali. Opener, ‘Demain Sera Mieux’ arrives with Al-Qaissy’s compelling vocals, driven by grinding electronics, galloping rhythms and brassy bursts from Heeren and Mordijck. Al-Qaissy’s percussive expertise shines on ‘Iraqi Drum Set’, as the multi-instrumentalist delivers turns on daf and raq, while ‘Freedom, Asshole’ is all juddering beats, distorted polemics and a feature from Nihiloxica drummer Spooky-J. ‘État Coupable (feat. Radwan Ghazi Moumneh)’ hears Heeren take to the mic, his bandmates bolstering his howls with bolshy 4/4 thumps and skittering synths. It’s an excoriating call to action from this increasingly compelling trio.
Read in in their June 2025 edition
+ ‘Kadhdhaab’ Part of their Top of the world cd/selection June 2025:
Skittering percussion and slow horns build to a gloriously whirling and clattering, electro-heavy mash-up of Iraqi and European dance music, with vocals that will make your hair stand on end.
Dansende Beren
This new single contains all the elements you would expect from a Use Knife song. Jerky electronic pulses flow together with unbridled Arabic percussion and incantatory chants into a turbulent river. You feel yourself slipping further and further into the unique flow of pumping beats and chaotic synth sequences. Suddenly, in the middle of the song, everything changes into a unique and calm ambient soundscape that makes you feel like you have wandered into a completely different world. It is wonderful to stay in this quiet bubble. The influence of Radwan Ghazi Moumneh is clearly present. Here on both buzuq (a kind of lute with a long neck) and synth. With this new single you get twice the value for your money. Definitely worth it!
Read more (in Dutch)
Recorder
We know how well Arabic singing full of melismas fits into electronic music. Many dance versions of this pairing have become quite well-known, but Use Knife shows its dark side.
In the trio of singer-percussionist Saif Al-Qaissy, a refugee from Iraq, and two Belgian musicians, Kwinten Mordijck and Stef Heeren, in addition to Arabic percussion, metallic drums, dirty basses and EBM, acidic synths are played, and there is a lot of distortion. Despite the fact that this is a dark album, it is also a distinctly danceable and captivating one.
For the most part, songs that are more vocal and more rhythm-focused alternate; and the title track takes the listener's excitement and involvement to the peak – it's hard not to be angry with Al-Qaissy for dogmas! But after five minutes, the track suddenly turns into a depressing ambient, made more painful by the sound of the buzuq.
The distorted, overlapping vocal layers of the closing Che Mali Wali are both heavy and psychedelically uplifting – leaving open the question of whether there is a return to activism after falling from the peak. This ambiguous closing takes the album to a new level.
Read more (in Hongarian)
Kalporz / Monolith Cocktail
Two distant worlds: neither prevails over the other but a multifaceted rhythmic magma is created, between West and East. The opening track of État Coupable, the latest album by the trio mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem in My Heart), is paradigmatic in this sense: “Demain Sera Mieux”. In the four and a half minutes of the piece, a 10/6 time signature (popular in Iraq but also in Armenian and Turkish music) is grafted onto a vortex of synths. Or again: the vibrations, the industrial beats of a track like “Iraqi Drum Set” are also ignited by the daf percussion (i.e. a frame drum that is part of the musical tradition of the Middle East) and by the chaos of words, resulting from the sampling of the trio’s conversations on Iraqi instruments and their pronunciation.
The sound discourse of Use Knife (the name comes from a line by Current 93, «the stars spell grammar or use knife») is sharp and in media res: there are no preambles, we get to the heart of an artistic creation that wants to become action.
Read more (in Italian) Read more (in English)
Blow Up
A remarkable album, much better than the previous one: to keep an ear to.
Indiestyle
Nowadays you get the feeling that Use Knife has grown into a band that has found their vision and sound. (...) Al-Qaissy has Iraqi roots and carries his own backpack. However, you feel very strongly through Al-Qaissy's vocal passages that Palestinian suffering transcends national borders and (in his case) seems to reopen certain wounds. It is no coincidence that the wind instrument functions as a kind of warning signal during the first minutes of 'Kadhdhaab'. Nor is the way in which the percussion on 'Iraqi drum set' almost seems to imitate gunfire or even artillery.
Read more (in Dutch)
Doppelpunkt
A magnificent, surprising album comes from the Belgian-Iraqi trio Use Knife, who released their debut, "The Shedding of Skin," in 2022, which I unfortunately overlooked, and last year the "Peace Carnival" EP on the Berlin Morphine outlet. On their new 7-track longplayer, "État Coupable" [viernulvier], culture and politics merge even more deeply with their sound. Vocalist and percussionist Saif Al-Qaissy, who fled Iraq due to the war, delivers an even more intense, pleading performance in Arabic, supported by the sharp, cracking electronic synth sounds and samples somewhere between EBM and industrial by Stef Heeren and Kwinten Mordijck. Al-Qaissy tells the unavoidable story of freedom, responsibility, and the gap between Eastern and Western mentalities, and his message and vocals have become more prominent over the years—and rightly so. In addition to the electronics and percussion, there is also a saxophone and guests include Nihiloxica's Spooky-J and Jerusalem in My Heart's Radwan Ghazi Moumneh.
Read (in German)
The Shedding of Skin (Sep 30, 2022)
Use Knife's first album The Shedding of Skin (VIERNULVIER Records) had reviews, interviews, airplay and mentions from BBC6, Dusted Magazine, It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine, The Attic, Mixmag Mena, Mixmag Asia, Gonzo (Circus), A Closer Listen, White Light/White Heat, Radio alHara, VRTNWS, Polifonia (Polityka), Nowamuzyka, Stegi Radio, KIOSK Radio, Indiestyle, 3voor12, We Are Various, HHV Records, Turn Up The Volume, REMAIIN, Syrphe, Radio Raheem, Foxy Digitalis, CMU, Stadskanker, Blurred and obscured, Sterrenplaten, Phonofocus, Rebel Up, Urgent.fm, KEXP, Noods Radio, ...
The Quietus
Now, Heeren, Mordijck, and Al-Qaissy operate in a territory occupied by few. Instead of merely collecting and layering influences from the East and the West, they coalesce the disparate cultural and artistic strains into new expressions that belong to both worlds but are bound to neither of them.
Take the opening cut ‘Ptolemaic’, for example, which rides in on a pumping techno beat, only for its steady drive to be joyously broken up by polyrhythms constructed from looping doholas, kishbas, and other Arabic percussion instruments. Longing susurrations and manipulated bits of melismatic singing hang over this supremely danceable concoction of synthetic and organic sounds. These vocal lines provide a mournful undercurrent to the music before uniting in gorgeous singsong that bounces off the sparse accompanying instrumentation like an echo of a religious oration against walls.
Dusted Magazine
“The Shedding of Skin definitely still has plenty of that original focus on analogue, outsider electronic music, but a significant and successful infusion of influences, forms, and instruments from Arabic music gives the trip real distinctiveness and bite. (...) the six songs here (including a brief, yearning reading of traditional song “Ed Wana Ed”) aim somewhere between the club and the experimental atelier, or possibly some kind of ritual space. The real success here is making music that feels like it would work equally well in any of those areas, even if you’re just listening on headphones.”
Gonzo (Circus)
And that first album can safely be called a direct hit: 'The Shedding of Skin' is a rousing Belgian-Iraqi mix of pulsating electronics and energetic rhythms. One of the highlights on their debut album is 'True-Love Not', on which echoing vocals, sounding like an exasperated cry of love, slowly disappear into a sea of swelling percussion and synthesizers.
Read more (in Dutch)
+ on mind the gap compillation
+ some year-end lists
It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine
Première of Coupe d'état (Boem Ratata version)
Foxy Digitalis
Première of To Feed the Gentry (live at VIERNULVIER)
“No matter where our attention is turned, as soon as Jerusalem In My Heart’s Radwan Ghazi Moumneh’s buzuq rings out in the opening moments of “To Feed The Gentry,” our focus is caught. Moumneh joins the trio of Stef Heeren, Kwinten Mordijck, and Saif Al-Qaissy for this sonic exorcism. The embers of the buzuq improvisations catch, and a fire blooms. Vocals swirl in all directions, tethered to the ground by heavy electronic drones. This music is trying to break free from a world confining us. Tension grows in each successive expression, pushing further and further into the sky. “We will feed the gentry cobblestones” repeats as a mantra. Youniss Ahamad’s glitching, hypnotic visuals incorporated into this live performance help wind the wire even tighter. Use Knife tap into an ancient energy and transform it into new, futurist sacred rituals.”
The Attic
Staff picks of September 2022
Turn Up The Volume
“It’s simple. This is not only the best dance record I heard all year, but it’s also the most intriguing and fascinating one”
Liveshows
Use Knife's AV liveshow has played Le Guess Who?, Rewire, Roadburn, Suoni per il popolo, Sonic City, Grauzone Festival, MENT Ljubljana, Videodroom/VIERNULVIER, Wave-Gotik-Treffen, We Are Open, dunk!festival, WORM, Wrongfest a.o. They caught the attention from The Wire, The Quietus, Gonzo (Circus), Crack Magazine, Focus Knack, Indiestyle, dublab, Dansende Beren, What Happens, RTBF, Full Moon Zine, Under The Radar Mag, 3voor12, enola, Nowe Idzie od Morza, Mojo Magazine, Nowe Idzie Od Morza, Le Nouvelliste, Bruzz, a.o. Here you can find a few quotes from reviews
The Wire
Concert review MENT Ljubljana 2025
Yalla Miku and Use Knife both excel at erasing global borders, (...) the latter by bridging East and West with an abrasive electronic skin and a tender core of melismatic singing. It’s this sort of diversity and choice of quality over quantity that helps MENT live up to its moniker - a music discovery festival, indeed.
The Quietus
Concert review MENT Ljubljana 2025
MENT acts as a cultural crossroads for many, so it’s fitting that the last word should be for the band that best captures the tectonic shifts and strains in Europe in these uncertain times, Use Knife. The Ghent-Brussels-based outfit play an absolutely thumping show. Their offering has become darker, starker, and maybe more psychedelic in the run-up to their imminent new album. A nod to Coil, too, maybe… The insistent, pulsating mix of (electronic) dark folk, new beat, Arabic percussion and Iraqi Maqam see an audience melt into various shapes in Kino Šiška, surrendering to the beat and the dazzling visuals on the gigantic screens. There is much more menace in the air, what with their talk of little vagabonds and wanderers… Until next time.
Concert review Rewire 2025
On the last night, Use Knife brought their visceral and beautiful show to the Paard, the thumping (new) beats and plaintive calls for understanding reminding us that whilst we’re in the gutter, we must look up.
Gonzo (Circus)
Concert review Grauzone 2023
"Of a completely different caliber and unfortunately for a (too) select audience was Use Knife, the Belgian-Iraqi association of Stef Heeren (Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat), Kwinten Mordijck (idem) and percussionist Saif Al-Qaissy. Mysteriously hidden behind white transparent gauze screens on which, among other things, Arabic words and images were projected, they presented their acclaimed debut album 'The Shedding Of Skin'. We couldn't distinguish the announced analog and modular synths, but it was all the more tribal, danceable and conjuring. A person in 2023 will not come closer to a Muslimgauze live experience."
Concert review Rewire 2025
Meanwhile, in the small hall of the same building, the equally stunning Belgian/Iraqi Use Knife is on stage, underlining how well Western European and Arabic popular music go together.
Nowe Idzie Od Morza
Concert review Rewire 2025
The concert by Use Knife – a trio formed by Iraqi singer Saif Al-Qaissy, Belgian musicians Kwinten Mordijck and Stef Heeren, and visual artist Youniss Ahamad – is similarly impressive. The band combines Middle Eastern sounds with electronica, post-punk, and EBM to create an energetic, trance-like performance with a strong political charge. In the Paard hall, their concert becomes one of the most danceable events of the festival – the visuals resemble a contemporary, ritualistic disco.
Focus Knack
Concert review Videodroom 2022
The same urgency was also contained in the music of Use Knife. Already from the first song, the title track of The shedding of skin, Heeren's shouted lyrics stood out. With short phrases like 'shed your skin!' shouted forcefully into the microphone, it often felt like we were on a danceable protest march. (...) Just as powerful as the lyrics was the music. The beats sounded a lot heavier than on the album, which made it feel like a kind of languid acid techno with Middle Eastern influences. Al-Qaissy's versatile percussion provided a pleasant counterbalance to the unwieldy beats and enchanting melodies. The combination of Eastern melodies and solid beats was sometimes reminiscent of the work of Acid Arab, but more experimental and combative.
Read more (in Dutch)
Concert review Sonic City 2022
The Arabic vocals, combined with electronic effects and strong beats won us over. (There also were) Beautiful visuals that were projected on the canvases. (...) A master class in fusing styles.
Read more (in Dutch)
Indiestyle
Concert review Sonic City 2022
“In addition to being a musical spectacle, it was also a visual spectacle with all kinds of impressive visuals on large canvases that were draped in front of them. Use Knife was without a doubt one of the discoveries of this edition.”
Read more (in Dutch)
Dansende Beren
Concert review Sonic City 2022
“(...) The production was impressive to say the least. Three gigantic canvases on which images were projected, with the band members behind them. (...) The sound here was very danceable with greasy synths, but we always saw a strange instrument popping up in the silhouettes to provide the whole thing with experiment. In this way, Use Knife turned out to be an audiovisual spectacle that we could keep watching and listening to because it always triggered a certain curiosity.”
Read more (in Dutch)
Concert review We Are Open 2023
"(...) The great hall was filled with swelling electronics, menacing percussion and Arabic vocals. This mix of Western electronica and traditional Arabic music was intoxicating, but it was the visual spectacle that stole the show. The artists hid behind white curtains, which sometimes magnified their silhouettes, and then showed disorienting visuals by Youniss Ahamad. All this made for an interesting hypnotic set, which unfortunately passed quickly."
Read more (in Dutch)
daMusic
Concert review Sonic City 2022
“With Use Knife, the second surprise of the day immediately followed. It was also early in the day for this trio, because the curtains remained closed throughout the performance. Good, because the visuals on the three immense transparent curtains, combined with those shadowy shadows, were a feast for the eyes. Well, the set was also a treat for the ear. In forty minutes we were taken to all corners of the world. Two members of Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat incorporated Iraqi Saif Al-Qaissy as Arab percussionist and brought a fascinating brew to Kortrijk that many referred to as one of the highlights of the day. The band recently released their first album on the new Viernulvier Records. It's high time to check it out."
Read more (in Dutch)
Musiczine
Concert review Sonic City 2022
“The real reason we arrived so early was Use Knife, which we've been following for a while and really likes it. (...) Use Knife (*****) like to experiment in their sounds. They also use non-obvious instruments and elevate experimental music to a true art form. Hidden behind transparent cloths on which beautiful images appeared, Stef Heeren, Kwinten Mordijck and Saif Al-Qaissy pull out all the stops to stun those present with a total audiovisual spectacle. On one occasion, one of the band members came to the front to sing stanzas, with 'Fucked' projected in the background. The audience reacted wildly enthusiastically and the band members came to the front to express their gratitude. Spectacular set this Use Knife.”
Read more (in Dutch)
Concert review We Are Open 2023
"An intense, deafening sound, which has an intoxicating, hypnotic influence. A magical, intriguing game of sound and image that feels unearthly, fairytale-like, spooky.”
Read more (in Dutch)
3voor12
Tips for Le Guess Who? 2022
"Le Guess Who favorite Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart) discovered this Belgian trio and produced their debut, a conglomeration of ferocious Arabian percussion and intoxicating drum machines."
Read more (in Dutch)
Interviews & other releases
Interviews
The Quietus
Feature: Music For A New Society: Use Knife Interviewed
"I had seen Use Knife on the cavernous main stage at Trix in Antwerp in February and was blown away by the sheer scale of their show. There, Ahamad’s projections shifted and slid in gigantic form in front of us, reassembling to the beat and suggesting new ways of expression as the juddering mixes of synthesised rhythms and plangent vocals swept over the audience. There is nothing half-hearted about Use Knife as a live act. You get the distinct feeling that each member is totally energised by this iteration of their collective art. A Belgian article dubbed their sound “electronic outsider music,” yet for me it is an all-embracing vortex that allows those experiencing it a chance to plunge, headfirst, into a hypnotic state that veers between a dreamlike trance and a sensual workout.
In Antwerp, people sucked in a sound that drew on venerated and contemporary Western underground music alongside various iterations of traditional Arab music culture. Most excitingly, as it unfolded, the music created an uncertainty as to what may happen next. Their song structures trigger a palpable wait for a “hidden reverse”, whether emotionally or sonically, reverses that originate from a number of cultural sources. This is the key they use to unlock us: a quick shifting of viewpoints allowing a wider emotional release."
Gonzo (Circus)
Extended 3-page interview
Read more (in Dutch)
Full Moon Zine
Extended 3-page interview
We cannot talk about an audiovisual show, the performance of the Belgian-based trio Use Knife is a kind of strange hybrid, an experience on the border of genres and forms, which remains exceptional in today's visual-obsessed world, bringing a message of openness and understanding. (...) One of the most interesting moments of the album État coupable is the track Freedom, Asshole, which features a guest appearance from Nihiloxica drummer SpookyJ. The intervention of live drums in the middle of the electronic beats totally accelerates the whole song, as does AlQaissy’s powerful vocals. (...) “All eyes on us, dogma upon dogma,” Heeren repeatedly declaims during the title track État coupable, similar feelings are probably being fought by each of us, the stylized standard on the album cover symbolizes difficult times. The majestic title track is the centerpiece of the entire album, and it closes with a magnificent several-minute outro with the dominating lute buzuq, played by the aforementioned Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. État coupable means something along the lines of The State is Guilty, Use Knife, with its fiery production, attempts to address elites, institutions and every individual to whom the fate of the world is not completely foreign. At the same time, they also appeal to themselves not to slacken in their activity
Focus Knack
Interview + premiere of first single 'Ptolemaic'
Read more (in Dutch)
HUMO
Interview
Read more (in Dutch)
Peace Carnival (Apr 8, 2024)
Use Knife's remix-ep Peace Carnival (Morphine Records, Apr 8, 2024) on which Zoë Mc Pherson, Muqata'a & Rabih Beaini remix tracks from debutalbum The Shedding of Skin had reviews, interviews, airplay and mentions from BBC6's New Music Fix, NTS Radio, Radio Fantasia, Tsugi Radio, Fullmoon Zine, Stegi Radio, Noods Radio, DJ Marcelle, Nowamuzyka, Boomkat, White Light/White Heat, Polifonia (Polityka), Mojo Magazine, ...
Boomkat
Morphine boss Beaini is up first, and his dense, drum-heavy version of 'To Feed the Gentry' should be enough reason to cop this one alone. The original track stretched out for almost 15 minutes, taking its time to introduce a thudding kick drum, but Beaini gets started quickly, complicating the rhythm with ornate hand drum flushes that dance around Radwan Ghazi Moumneh's buzzing buzuk lead and Saif Al-Qaissy's vocals. Beaini's electronic treatments are deceptively subtle: cautious loops and freeform edits that breathe along with the original parts. This is how you handle a remix.
Mc Pherson takes a sharper razor to 'Ptolemaic'; Use Knife's original was the album's heaviest track, and Mc Pherson increases the bass weight with thick subs that enlarge Use Knife's electro-acoustic instrumentation. Heralded by a looping vocal chant from Saif Al-Qaissy, gravelly breaks lift the mix into the next dimension - it's a slow, tense groover that's nowhere near as fast and chaotic as Mc Pherson's usual fare. And Muqata'a finishes things off with a brilliantly granulated version of Use Knife's housey 'The Shedding of Skin', interrupting his fluid beatwork with pregnant pauses and furious live fills. All killer, no filler.
Nowamuzyka
“The upcoming EP "Peace Carnival" is excellent reinterpretations and remixes of three selected recordings from the previously mentioned "The Shedding of Skin". The set opens with the song "To Feed the Gentry (feat. Radwan Ghazi Moumneh)" filtered by the production mastery of the Lebanese Rabih Beaini from Morphine Records. His label has been operating for almost 20 years! I have the impression that Beaini added an even greater trance to this composition, evoking a strong blast of Middle Eastern percussion, interspersed with the accent of brass, hypnotic oud and mantrically looped voices.
The composition "Ptolemaic" was taken up by the French-Irish artist Zoë McPherson (do you remember her album "String Figures"?), shocking us with uncompromising breaks from the drum'n'bass tornado with shades of downright post-punk / post-industrial and keeping you in the grip of dense, bass electronics until the end. The 10-inch vinyl ends with "Coupe d'état" performed by the Palestinian producer Muqata'a, who probably followed the original most faithfully, which only served to give this recording an original trend that cuts the sonic material with samples.
"Peace Carnival" is only 18 minutes of music, but it is thrilling and shows how electronic music should and can sound today, filled to the brim with freshness.”
Read more (in Polish)
Sowieso F***ed (Oct 20, 2023)
On Oct 20, 2023 Use Knife released ‘Sowieso F***ed’, ‘F***ed على أي حال’ or ‘F***ed anyway’, The release was initiated before the brutal reality of the genocide happening in Gaza. The cynical message made way for solidarity with the Palestinian people. The profits made from this release and the accompanying t-shirt will therefore go to the Gaza Crisis Appeal of Oxfam. There was some coverage by The Quietus, Bantmag, Turn Up The Volume,
Turn Up The Volume
This new Use Knife piece is a both haunting and hypnotic affair. We get ominous slo-mo beats banging relentlessly with eerie chants all over it. Dark clouds in the air, calm before the storm, subdued electronic anger. It’s an alarming motherfucker of a track.
FUCK all war-greedy political leaders.
Contact & Documents
The first liveshow and album where made possible with the help of Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER in conjunction with STUK, Muziekcentrum Trix, Wilde Westen, Ancienne Belgique, CC De Grote Post en de Vlaamse overheid.The 2nd liveshow and album where made possible with the help of Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER in conjunction with STUK, Wilde Westen, Donaufestival, Vlaams Cultuurhuis De Brakke Grond, Les Halles de Schaerbeek en de Vlaamse overheid.
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