LAIBACH
Musick (Mute)
The album cover of Laibach’s latest depicts a syringe, forming the ‘I’ in ‘MUSICK’, injecting a neon-pink substance into an arm with the band logo tattooed onto it, and if you ever thought the Socialist Republic of Slovenia’s finest were ever a bit too on the nose, they’re certainly not going to change your mind with this release. This is their most plasticky, fakest, cheapest-sounding record yet, harking back to their pop parodies of N.A.T.O (1994) and WAT (2003).
Here, they’ve done away with most of their industrial sound to produce gleaming, autotuned, algorithmically-driven pop that already sounds dated (packed, obviously, with collaborations designed to maximise social media outreach). That, of course, is the point: Laibach’s conceptual brilliance – using the form of the detritus of modern culture to expertly satirise it – ensures they can get away with it, providing genuine laugh-out-loud moments throughout. It takes great taste to create something so tasteless.
words FEDOR TOT
