There are very few artists (bands) who still manage to surprise me these days. The 2006’s “Volk” was a peerless release, it’s quite impossible to overtake that album and Laibach definitively had a hard time to figure out what they should do next. True, meanwhile they released in 2008 “Laibachkunstderfuge” – a concept album, the laibachian interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “The Art of Fugue” (Lai-Bach-Kunst-Der-Fuge) – and in 2012 the original soundtrack for the movie “Iron Sky”. Also they released a mind blowing live album “Monumental Retro-Avant-Garde – Live at London Tate Modern 14 April 2012” and a consistent retrospective entitled “An Introduction To… Laibach”. While “Laibachkunstderfuge” was a quite exclusivist, unfriendly album in the manner of the early Laibach albums (Nova Akropola, Opus Dei, Macbeth, etc) the “Iron Sky” soundtrack consist of 40 tracks and 80 minutes of music.
Now, listening “Spectre” I’m both excited and pleased, Laibach is the same creative, groundbreaking art collective and they prove once again that there is music outside the mainstream and the “box”.
I have written about their past extensively, read here, but for the ignorants, Laibach is a Slovenian and former Yugoslav avant-garde music group associated with industrial, martial, and neo-classical musical styles. The name “Laibach” is the German name for Slovenia’s capital city, Ljubljana.
Laibach was formed in 1980 in Trbovlje, Slovenia, at the time SFR Yugoslavia. The band represents the music wing of the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) art collective, of which it was a founding member in 1984. Other NSK member groups include IRWIN (visual art), Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre (also known as Red Pilot and Cosmokinetic Theatre Noordung), New Collective Studio (graphics; also known as New Collectivism), Retrovision (film and video), and the Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy (theory).
Although many people know or heard about Laibach mainly because of their twisted off covers and eventually because some people pointed out that Rammstein copied most of their ideas and moves, Laibach is definitively one of the most creative and experimental art collective.
“Spectre” consist of 10 tracks and it’s a post-modern journey out of the comfort zone of the electro-industrial music. You can hardly erase from your head the anthematic melody of “The Whistleblowers”, but don’t get fooled! “Spectre” it’s a contorted, pretty dark and disturbing journey. While the opening “The Whistleblowers” it’s a true blood hit-single/anthem, the rest of the album it’s getting darker and darker with each song. The first half of the album it’s catchier and easier to chew through and digest while the last three tracks are more abstract and experimental, less “commercial”/traditional – if we can speak about commercial and traditional approaches in the case of Laibach. It’s a consistent, disturbing incursion in the post-industrial, avant-garde electronic music area, an exciting alternative to the predictable, boring mainstream electronic (EDM) music. Resistance is futile? For the sake of our children, I hope not!!
Track listing:
01.The Whistleblowers
02.No History
03.Eat Liver!
04.Americana
05.We Are Millions And Millions Are One
06.Eurovision
07.Walk With Me
08.Bossanova
09.Resistance Is Futile
10.Koran
Mandatory! Buy it or steal it!!!
Laibach – Official Site
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