- Who doesn't love The Sound Of Music? Veteran Slovenian art-rockers Laibach are obviously fans of the classic 1965 musical and apparently they discovered, on a recent tour of North Korea, that it's one of the few pieces of Western culture that has penetrated widely into the Democratic People's Republic.
Inspired by this tour, Laibach recorded their new album - covering in it's entirety the Rodgers And Hammerstein Sound Of Music soundtrack, plus a couple of traditional Korean songs at the end. The result, at first glance, is a very odd collection of familiar songs recorded as epic electronic rock with deep growling vocals.
But as ever with Laibach, I think there is something more going on here below the surface. Laibach emerged in the '80s in communist Yugoslavia, where they courted controversy by using fascist imagery. Even their name, which is the German name for Slovenia's capital city Ljubljana, used during the Nazi occupation, is a fascist reference.
Laibach's politics are sometimes hard to pin down, but they're not neo-Nazis. I think their use of that imagery in the 80s, when living under an authoritarian government which had gained legitimacy by fighting the Nazis, was a way of reminding people of how Nazis had used art as a political tool. And that maybe Yugoslavia's communist party weren't as far from them as their propaganda would suggest.
Fast forward three decades and Laibach are touring another authoritarian communist country and again finding common cultural ground through a story about Nazi horrors. Is it that in this tale of finding love and joy in the face of the totalitarian threat, they have found a subtle message to sneak through the censors and give to the people of North Korea? In one track they cunningly change one letter so the lyrics now say "How do you solve a problem like Korea? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?"
Sometimes political statements require a bit of subversion; but this one may be a bit too obscure for many listeners, who will just hear bizarre electro-prog versions of old musical numbers. Which is still, on one level, kinda enjoyable. Ultimately, Laibach are more like conceptual artists than protest singers. So a lot is left up to the listener's imagination. Overall, the feeling I get from this album is the same as most of the band's music - I might not always get the urge to listen to it, but I'm just glad that somewhere in the world, Laibach are out there doing their unique thing.
- Andy Paine.