Photograph courtesy of Maya Nightingale
Laibach have just announced that they’ll be releasing their new album Spectre on March 3 via Mute. It’s their first album since 2006’s Volk, barring LAIBACHKUNSTDERFUGE and their soundtrack to Iron Sky, and gets previewed with the penultimate track, ‘Resistance Is Futile’, and a trailer, both of which you can stream below:
As the text accompanying the announcement explains, the album marks another "reinvention" for the Neue Slowenische Kunst group, "call[ing] into question all the rigid and cemented interpretations (and prejudices) about itself". It goes on: "With Spectre Laibach has created a big, important, and almost dangerous step forward; it seems that this time it has fatally crossed the Rubicon. On this album the group – which has never defined itself politically, but has, nevertheless, constantly analysed politics through its work – comes across as politically engaged as never before. Spectre literally sounds like a political manifesto manifest in poetic form. Titles and lyrics couldn’t be more direct. With these lyrics and songs, Laibach, who has always given a controversial impression – or an impression of controversy – especially in terms of its political orientation, is now very clearly taking a position on the political spectrum and probably irreversibly abolishing its own (to some extent quite comfortable) political ‘freedom’ and neutrality."
In support of the album, the group will be embarking on a 24-date tour, taking in a show at London’s Koko on March 12, and their first appearance in China later that month, accompanying it with an art exhibition and a seminar at the City University of Hong Kong. Head to their website for full details; in the meantime, read our Three Songs No Flash report on their 2012 concert at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and their Strange World Of… here.
