Project Description
Interview with
LAIBACH
Interviewer – Dave Bruce
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For any new fans, where did it all begin and how did you all come together?
Laibach: We started in 1980 in a small industrial city of Trbovlje, Slovenia, Yugoslavia. Friends and schoolmates who lived in Trbovlje and in neighbouring cities, originally created the band.
You have been through so much in the last forty years, where does one begin? Can you describe some of the highlights over that period?
L: Not an easy thing; first we were forbidden at the very start, but we still managed to do several important shows in Yugoslavia before they finally forbade us with official public decree in 1983. The ban in Slovenia and Yugoslavia lasted till 1987. Due to the ban at home we decided to tour Europe and in 1983 we did our first European tour, titled as “Occupied Europe Tour”. We performed 22 shows in Eastern and Western Europe, on both sides of the Iron Curtain and ended with a final concert in London. Soon after we signed a contract with Cherry Red Records, independent label from London, and release our 2nd album ‘Nova Akropola’ in 1986. Our first album was recorded in 1983 in Yugoslavia and due to the ban it has been released in 1985, but without the name of the band. In 1984 we co-created an extended art movement, called Neue Slowenische Kunst. In 1986 we signed with Mute Records and released an album ‘Opus Dei’ (1987), followed by many more albums till today. Soon we extensively started to tour Europe, North America and Russia. In 1992 we established a virtual state of NSK. In 1995 we performed two shows in the occupied Bosnian capital Sarajevo, in 2015 we were invited to perform in North Korea, and now, in 2020, we are finally coming also in Australia. The rest is history.
How would you describe your sound and why do you think people resonate with your music?
L: Our sound is like a rainbow, consisted of all possible sounds, styles and genres, so people simply must resonate with it.
How did you feel about playing North Korea? Were you not scared that they may have used you as a “marketing” opportunity?
L: We were really glad to be able to perform in North Korea and no, we were not afraid that they would use us as a “marketing tool”. It’s quite impossible to do that with Laibach.
Did the events and the fan response seem similar to a “normal” show? If not, how did it differ?
L: Of course this was not a “normal” Laibach show, we had to adjust it to the North Korean context and it did differ quite a lot from our regular concert. But it was still a Laibach show. The entire process of building that concert in Pyongyang was filmed and released as a documentary film, titled ‘Liberation Day’.
You have a Sydney show coming up in January. What are you looking forward to and what can the fans expect?
L: We are very glad that we can finally perform also in Sydney, in Australia, although we are very sad about the entire fire cataclysm that is going on in your country right now. We will present material from our latest albums, but also a selection of songs from earlier albums.
With the huge catalogue of artists you have seen and shared the stage with, if you could perform with any music artist, Alive or Dead, who would you choose? And why?
L: We like collaborations a lot and we are totally open to different options. It would be great to perform with the Beatles, with Miles Davis, Hendrix, Kraftwerk, Joy Division, Bowie and many other superb artists from the music history. Why? For obvious reasons of course.
What’s next for you in the near future? What are your longer-term aspirations?
L: After Australia we are doing a concert in Hong Kong and then we go directly to Berlin, working on a theatre production, actually ‘musical’, based on texts of famous German dramatic and poet Heiner Mueller. We are soon releasing a triple album ‘Laibach Revisited’, and we have several further albums ready to be released as well. At the moment we are also discussing an option to collaborate with the Tehran Symphonic orchestra in Iran and we are preparing a series of events in Slovenia, in our hometown Trbovlje, to commemorate Laibach’s 40th Anniversary.
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Check out LAIBACH below
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LAIBACH
‘The Sound of Music’
SYDNEY SHOW JANUARY 16 – 2020
Slovenia’s industrial pop pioneers and political provocateurs were the first ‘foreign’ rock band to be invited into North Korea and perform in Pyongyang. Now they’re coming to Sydney to take on The Sound of Music-and selected songs from their back catalogue, reaching back to 1980-including Also Sprach Zarathustra, Spectre, Sympathy for the Devil, WAT, Kapital, Volk, Laibach Revisited…. All with experimental flair and boundary-smashing gusto.
For nearly forty years now, from their genesis in the then-Yugoslavian industrial town Trbovlje, Laibach are still the most internationally acclaimed band to have come out of the former Communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe.
The Sound of Music was conceived when Laibach were infamously invited to perform in North Korea in 2015. The band performed several songs from the 1965 film’s soundtrack at the concert in Pyongyang, chosen by Laibach as it’s a well-known and beloved film in the DPRK and often used by schoolchildren to learn English. The album gives the Laibach treatment to tracks such as ‘My Favorite Things’, ‘Edelweiss’, ‘Do-Re-Mi’ and ‘Maria’, here reworked as ‘Maria / Korea’ (“How do you solve a problem like Maria / Korea?”).
EXCLUSIVE SYDNEY SOLO SHOW
Jan 16 – Sydney, Metro Theatre
TICKETS ON SALE HERE
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