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), were also flanked by two female dancers who performed throughout the set.
The set began on title and opening track ‘Musick’ and its follow-up ‘Musick Pt. 2’ featuring African 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 with glowing plasmoic 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, with frenzied rock track Manca Trampuš in ‘Keep it Reel’, whose title puns on the artificial age of social media 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 trippy drumbeats, although audience participation was a bit muted.
As at their previous shows, Laibach had a ‘Musick intermezzia’ on 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’, with former backing vocalist, Mina Špiler, singing on screen as in previous shows. New album track ‘Yes Maybe No’ was a little tacky (perhaps deliberate) without its singer Marina Mårtensson, however, by way of technology, she was beamed on screen for Mozart melody copy ‘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. 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.