Skip to main content

Turbovolk!















Laibach live in London 25.11.06

Following the Laibach Kunst performance at RoTr in Birmingham this September, the full new Laibach line up played in London on 25th November. This was the only second date of Laibach's Volk tour following the opening concert in Ghent the previous night. The general view of the shows so far seems to be that the album works much better live, and the enhanced versions seem able to impress even Volk-sceptics. Certainly, Slovanija and particularly Nippon generate new interest in the live setting. Although some people become restless, the lengthy Nippon is very atmospheric. This is also due to the subtle and intricate background video. There are videos for each song, and they vary in style widely, some using more archive footage, some being entirely digital. Other impressive videos include Germania, Turkije and NSK (seen in the first photo here). Italia uses "found footage" to make a very black joke - watch the text on the screen carefully. In each case, the relevant national flag and the Volk logo interact. This means that once you've seen the live version, the album may seem like a soundtrack to the "real" (live) Volk.

After a short break the Volk set is followed by turbo-charged electronic versions of the most aggressive WAT songs plus Alle gegen Alle. There's a marked contrast between the two halves of the show, the first is more visual, static, and conceptual, while the second is much more assertive and ultimately populist. Whereas WAT shows concluded with the Zeta Reticula mix of Tanz mit Laibach, the new shows close with film-style credits playing on the screens, plus a rave-ish megamix of Laibach favourites that builds on iTurk's WAT remix on Anthems.

Volk shows will continue to evolve but they are already contain much new content and detail that will continue to develop. Whatever your attitude to Volk, its live incarnation is definitely worth seeing as much as hearing. Remaing tour dates here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

4th Annual Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture 2021 recording

Thanks to all who watched the event on Friday, we all enjoyed it and were really pleased with the response, we were only sorry not to have more time for questions and discussion. Ludmilla Andrews did a great job of executing the film at great speed in lockdown conditions. My commentary for the film was written in haste over the New Year and recorded in the following week. It's a snapshot of the transition from 2020 to 2021 through the prism of Test Dept's work and Fisher's response to it. 

People's March Against Neofeudalism

Last Saturday I join a pan-European group of friends and c. 700, 000 others on the People's March. As I explained to a Japanese journalist, we were there as we felt we had no choice. I have the sense that many in the country feel that if they just keep their heads down and give the Brexit People what they want, then they'll be satisfied. This is a huge mistake. The elite mob of disaster capitalists, neofeudalists and kleptocrats may not be unstoppable, but they are absolutely insatiable. Ultimately, nothing will satisfy their lust for blood and power, so it is better to make a stand now while it's still possible than to have to wrest back control from them amidst the Hard Brexit chaos they dream of. The most hard-hitting banner: Farage as English F ührer  I've been on 2 previous marches on this subject, but this was a huge increase in numbers and energy. Apart from a tiny pro-Trump mob outside Brexerspoons on Whitehall, there was no opposition. The weigh and spiri...

A Tale of Two Future Glasgows

Despite its undoubted cultural vitality, Glasgow has often had a grim reputation, especially south of the English border. Yet the very bleakness, exacerbated by epic mismanagement, aggressive deindustrialization and sectarianism has also made it a site of constant and sometimes tragically over-ambitious attempts at utopian regeneration. This can be seen in the now highly poignant film Glasgow 1980 , which was already being quietly forgotten and surpassed by harsh reality even before the city had reached the year the film is supposed to depict. It poignantly promised a gleaming, post-industrial future in which "muscle gives way to automation." Yet in between the completion of the film and 1980, the oil shock and economic slowdown shattered the dreams of its makers and backers. Relatively little of the utopian plans (which to some already seemed dystopian) was ever built and many of the hopes of the "white heat of technology" era came to nothing. Other buildings...