Rekapitulacija

They really like Laibach (bbc.co.uk)

Industrial art-metal crew Laibach are Slovenian. But in August 2015 they became, in a very strange turn of events indeed, the first foreign band to perform inside North Korea, their subversion of totalitarian imagery evidently striking a weird chord.

The gigs were the brainchild of Norwegian artist Morten Traavik, who had experience organising cultural exchanges with North Korea. After directing the video for Laibach’s The Whistleblowers, he showed his work to his contacts in Pyongyang, resulting in a formal invitation for the band. They performed two sets in the capital’s Ponghwa Theatre and Kum Song music school on the 70th anniversary of Korea’s independence from Japan, dubbing the shows The Liberation Day Tour. In an effort to not shock their audience too much, as well as their own songs, the band played covers including Edelweiss, Climb Every Mountain and other songs from The Sound of Music, and The Beatles’ Across the Universe.

Laibach’s Ivan Novak told Rolling Stone that the audience “reacted politely, applauding after every song, and at the end of the show, they gave us standing ovations… maybe they were happy that it was over”. After the show, an older Korean man told them, “I didn’t know that such music existed in the world, and now I know.”

The band were most impressed, however, by the students of the music school who performed after them, saying that they heard “everything from 70s Japan-sounding lollipop beats to experimental electroacoustic, almost Arca-like style of music, performed on electric guitars and synths, in combination with their traditional instruments”. Let’s hope we’ll be hearing from them soon.

The trip was also recorded in a Storyville documentary, When Rock Arrived in North Korea: Liberation Day. In it, Novak paraphrases Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack in every wall… that’s where the spirit gets in.”

7 - Laibach: Also sprach Zarathustra (kaninchenbauklaenge.blogspot.com)

Die schwer zu kategorisierende Industrial-/BDM-/Pop-Formation Laibach besteht mittlerweile seit sage und schreibe 37 Jahren. Es ist wirklich erstaunlich rstaunlich, wie völlig souverän die Slowenen dem Zahn der Zeit trotzen, wie viel Biss und Kreativität die Band noch in sich trägt. Nietzsches Hoffnung, mit seinem Werk Rezipienten zu finden, die eines „gleichen Pathos fähig und würdig sind“, werden Laibach mit ihrer Vertonung mehr als gerecht. Es ist ein monumentales, episches Werk mit unglaublich virtuos gestrickten Spannungsbögen und einem Sound- und Produktionslevel, das seinesgleichen sucht. Spätestens das minimalistisch eingesetzte Reibeisenorgan Milan Fras‘ als Sprachrohr für Nietzsches lakonische Aphorismen, jagt einem Schauer über Schauer den Rücken hinunter. Ambientflächen, ins Mark schneidende Synthies und neoklassische Elemente verschmelzen mit Industrial-, Rock- und Technoanleihen zu einem postmodernen Meisterwerk.

It would be awesome if The Stroj covered Laibach’s “Sila”.