Touring their 23rd studio album, ‘MUSICK’, the Slovenian industrial art-rock group were on a rare date in the UK as part of their European tour to promote the release of their kitsch electronic dance-pop album for our times. Laibach are no strangers to embracing contrary genres for comedic effect and melodies that juxtapose their lead singer’s basstone vocals and most of the set was taken from the new release including some further pieces made exclusively for the live shows.
As always a feature of their live performances, the show was an audio-visual spectacle accomplished with the help of strobe lighting and an accompanying visual backdrop. The lineup, formed of Milan Fras (vocals), Ivan “Jani” Novak (visuals), Vitja Balžalorsky (guitar, sampling/remixing, backing vocals), Bojan Krhlanko (drums), Luka Jamnik (synthesisers, backing vocals) and Rok Lopatič (keyboards, synthesisers, backing vocals), was also flanked by two female dancers who performed throughout the set.
The show began on title and opening track ‘Musick’ and its follow-up ‘Musick Pt. 2’ featuring Ghanian folk singer, Wiyaala; the first of which combined classical elements to be James Bond-like cinematic (with Fras dissing the franchise later on in the set) and the second a techno-industrial rave with asymmetrical choreographed dancing using glowing plasmic green light sticks that at one point were used to form the Laibach cross logo eerily beaming out into darkness. Second album song, the meditative and playful cheese of ‘Fluid Emancipation’, saw Jamnik on backing vocals while Fras sang in French for their dredgy Serge Gainsbourg cover of ‘Love On the Beat’.
The set was peppered with absurd comical elements such as a short vox pop called ‘GenerationZ’ which contained interviews with younger fans of the group (for some in the audience it was their first time seeing them live) and shameless merch promotional ads. Laibach collaborated with multiple female guest singers on the new release who featured in the visuals of the live performance of those songs, like frenzied rock track Manca Trampuš (Koala Voice) in ‘Keep it Reel’, whose title puns on the artificial age of social media (a theme throughout the album and visualised via hashtags in the live set) and plastic surgery. The dancers then led a choreography tutorial for the audience dubbed ‘Warm Up’ for the next new song, ‘Allgorhythm’ (also featuring Wiyaala), with a bosstone beat and tripping drumbeats, although audience participation was a bit muted.
As at their previous shows, Laibach had a ‘Musick intermezzia’ or mid-show interlude called ‘Laibach Medley’ – 13 minutes of sampling by Balžalorsky and calming ambience featuring clips from some of the group’s other compositions; Balžalorsky then played slide acoustic guitar in anti-protest song ‘Luigi Mangione’. They also revisited their 2014 studio album ‘Spectre’ with percussive march ‘Bossanova’, and former Laibach member, Mina Špiler, singing on screen as at past shows. New album track ‘Yes Maybe No’ was a little tacky (perhaps deliberate) without Laibach backing singer Marina Mårtensson who was on maternity leave, however, by way of technology, she was beamed on screen for Mozart melody plagiarising ‘Singularity’: typically a song about a music industry full of copies and remakes.
Then when things could not get any weirder, Laibach closed their set on ‘Das göttliche Kind’, with the dancers donning long furry limb extensions in which they writhed around the stage for the alien themed track. They returned for an encore cover of the Will-O-Bees’ ‘Make Your Own Kind of Music’ before rolling the end credits to what was possibly one of the most entertaining and voluminous live shows in the capital this year.
29/09/26: Laibach @ Islington Assembly Hall, London.
Photos © Peter Tainsh.
© Ayisha Khan.