Finally, the long established friendship with Copenhagen’s Thomas Knak leads to the first proper Opiate release on Morr Music. What started with Knak contributing remixes for Piano Magic, The Tied & Tickled Trio, and Bomb The Bass, as well as tracks for the »Blue Skied An’ Clear« compilation with his fellow producers Jesper Skanning (aka Acustic) and Anders Remmer (aka Dub Tractor) under their Future 3 guise, now culminates in the beautifully crafted »Sometimes EP«. Thomas Knak has managed to come up with an EP of almost cinematic proportions, striking us all with a perfectly balanced relation of organic sounds, sampled instruments like acoustic guitars, flutes and a piano as well as subtle digital manipulations and intricate beat programming. What is even more is that Knak knows how to provide his music with a spatial quality that clearly comes from his experience with dub as a production technique. At the same time, Opiate is never running the risk of drenching his compositions in confusing layers of delay and reverb. On the contrary: the EP’s six tracks are as organised as they are emotionally touching...
The material comprised by the »Sometimes EP« has been produced within the last two years. Among them is a track called »For Brian Alfred«, which has been inspired by said Mr. Alfred, an artist who invited Opiate, and other artists like Nobukazu Takemura and Pan American to set music to his paintings sending it back to Alfred who then used the music for inspiration to produce paintings for his show at Max Protetch gallery, NY in October 2002. The results have been included on a cd accompanying the exhibition’s catalogue.
Even if Thomas Knak calls himself ›a slow producer‹, he couldn’t be farer away from being called unproductive. He still runs his label Hobby Industries and alongside Jesper Skanning and Anders Remmer operates his other production id’s Future 3 and System who have released their debut album on Üole’s label ~scape only recently. As a daytime job he buys electronic music for the archive the national radio station in Denmark. Additionally, he is about to start working on his first feature film score as the danish director Christoffer Boe asked him to do so. In 2000 Thomas Knak has been working together with Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) on the OPTO-file project which was released in may 2001. A follow-up will soon be released as a joint project with a Japanese label and Hobby Industries. Also in 2000, Opiate got a phone call by Bjork which led up to him co-writing and producing two tracks on her »Verspertine« album (»Undo« and »Cocoon«) as well as remixing »Aurora«.
