Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Location: Ljubljana / Križanke / Slovenia
Concert date: May 16, 2014
Attendance: 3,300
The Laibach machine doesn’t let up. New album, new tour, new packaging for the old, tried-and-tested, highly effective recipe. From this March through April, Laibach were on the second leg of their European tour, then took a short break and set off on a mini Balkan tour all the way to Sofia, Bulgaria, which also brought them back to the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana. 3,400 people? Maybe a hundred or at most two hundred fewer. Either way, a sold-out Križanke. This time with a »regular« number.
The album »Spectre« and the tour title »Make This Country Relaxed Again«! For Laibach this is certainly an album that’s quick to win over the individual, endearingly »disco-ish«, and we can safely say that for Laibach artism this is the band’s pop moment. But of course the contents of this packaging are once again instantly recognizable by their trademark substance! It’s called the one-of-a-kind »Laibachism«.
Two hours with a twenty-minute break in the middle. A show loaded with rich visual backdrops and the typical play of spotlights that’s so characteristic of Laibach concerts. A huge stage! The hypnosis effect worked perfectly. Like a real spell! The lineup for the new production, Laibach’s new artistic makeover, for »Spectre of Laibach« (Duh Laibacha), goes like this: Milan Fras (vocals), Mina Špiler (vocals, synthesizer), Janez Gabrič (drums), Luka Jamnik (synthesizer) and newcomer Rok Lopatič (synthesizer), whom many of you know from his work with Leeloojamais. And we can’t skip the contribution of the »behind-the-scenes methods« of Ivan Novak, eternal visionary of perpetual change in the musical body of Laibach (lighting, projections).
Before the show, people formed two insane queues, slowly swallowed up by the venue’s one, eternally narrow bottleneck of an entrance. The first queue wound around the corner past SAZU and back toward Zlata Ladjica, the second was forming in the direction of Aškerčeva. The demand for Laibach from the masses these days is crazy. And that’s a good thing. Laibach are finally reaping, in their home country too, what they started sowing a good three decades ago. Hordes of people in black were gradually seizing power in Križanke!
In the first part Laibach played their new studio effort »Spectre«. The vocal contrast of the legendary Milan Fras, Laibach’s first icon, with Mina Špiler is still a perfect symbiosis. Fras’s recognizable »gloominess« balanced by Mina Špiler’s melodic, sweet but authoritative approach, which occasionally even evokes shades of Debbie Harry (Blondie), works like a charm! Then there’s the kinetics of sampling recognizable figures of industrial electronics from the merciless Laibach machine, courtesy of the Jamnik–Lopatič tandem, backed by Janez Gabrič’s solid, precisely measured strokes. For the first fifty minutes the quintet worked through the new album »Spectre« in unison, running on the routine of a well-studied script, closing with Resistance Is Futile. A provocation made of a mix of slogans and documentary footage, sensibly tied to the new album’s message about the decline of the little guys at the expense of capital, which sits in the hands of the strongest and biggest (assuming, of course, that money is the measure of that), and about the birth of »democratic doldrums« – globalization, a world of emptied souls robbed of every personal character. A new Laibach spell! Proven to work, then. With an element of shock!
The twenty-minute break flew by damn fast amid deep discussions and a beer, and the band was already back on stage to launch into the second part, starting with the prehistoric songs Brat moj and Ti, ki izzivaš, both of which have of course gone through a total musical transformation over the years! Reworked and refreshed and lifted to the artistic level of today’s Laibach musical sensibility! The two tracks tied to the film »Iron Sky« (B-Machina, Under the Iron SKy) also came out great, rocking the hall into a brief state of weightlessness, until the band tackled the cult Leben – Tod from the album »Opus Dei« (1988), likewise in arrangements completely »turned inside out« for a new era, when synthesizers became the key sonic makeup of the new Laibach look. Then came a bundle of brilliantly reworked songs by other artists, which has always been the band’s great mastery and which ultimately opened the door for Laibach to the league of the most recognizable names of the world »underground« , all the way to the closing (expected) Tanz mit Laibach and Das Spiel ist aus. With the visuals still front and center, right up to the final crescendo!
In some spots you miss the guitar, but the current Laibach art pose hasn’t allowed for it in years. It would sound great, though. And if I may provoke a little further. Don’t worry. Laibach wouldn’t turn into Rammstein because of it. Quite the opposite, if anything. But there were certainly plenty of people at Križanke that night who didn’t miss electric guitars one bit. Still, the future is »bright and sunny« and surely the artistic incarnation of the Laibach vessel will come, one that will someday carry this »rock« element in its content once again.
Laibach even prerecorded the addresses in the pauses between songs. Milan Fras really doesn’t communicate with the audience any other way than through facial expressions, gestures and, of course, the vocal interpretation of the concert repertoire. Before Under the Iron Sky a synthetic voice chimes in: »No Sieg-Heil-ing please!«. You can hardly squeeze out a better brainwave to add to the arsenal of typical Laibach provocation. In the video projections that use inserts from the film Iron SKy we actually get this greeting during the concert, so it’s not a provocation but a well-meaning and instructive warning to the audience not to repeat what others did. The second crazy feint was the audience’s repetitive response to that same synthetic voice urging: »Say how!! Say how-how! Now. Say how-how-how!« And so on. In short, by the end the whole of Križanke was joyfully and unanimously barking, which again fits together with the message of sinking into uniformity as a consequence of globalization on every level. And so we’re back at the message of the album »Spectre« and the circle closes.
It was another unforgettable ride with Laibach. The mastery of a singular art culture and pose that, in all its many guises, never stops inspiring and rewarding. You simply have to catch the »Spectre« spectacle when you get the chance. Two hours of hypnosis in Laibach’s one-of-a-kind world left peace and tranquility settled in the nooks of the souls of satisfied attendees. So we found ourselves in a country that was, at least for a moment, relaxed again. Until the next morning.
Setlist
Te Deum – Prelude (M.-A. Charpentier)
1. Eurovision
2. Walk with Me
3. Americana
4. We Are Millions and Millions Are One
5. Eat Liver!
6. Bossanova
7. Koran
8. The Whistleblowers
9. No History
10. Resistance Is Futile
–15 min. intermission—
11. Brat Moj
12. Ti, Ki Izzivaš
13. B Mashina
14. Under the Iron Sky
15. Leben-Tod
16. Warme Lederhaut (orig. The Normal)
17. Ballad of a Thin Man (orig. Bob Dylan)
18. See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (orig. Blind Lemon Jefferson)
—encore—
19. Love On The Beat (orig. Serge Gainsbourg)
20. Tanz mit Laibach
21. Das Spiel ist aus
The Whistleblowers (Video / Diamond Version Remix)
Photo Gallery
