Next Monday, March 3, Mute will release Spectre, the new album by Laibach. In anticipation of the album’s release, the video for the unsettlingly catchy single The Whistleblowers is up on Nowness. The video, featuring young Latvian athletes in an unusual training montage of propaganda-esque communist chic, is described as a "visual manifesto" by its Norwegian director Morten Traavik. Says Traavik, who the band found after discovering his viral video of a North Korean accordion band playing a slyly subversive take on A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’: "It was shot using a one-of-a-kind LOMO camera lens from the Soviet Union. This resulted in this extreme widescreen format, much like a three-stripe national flag with the video as the middle stripe."
Both video and song are intended to be supportive of whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, ending with the on-screen text, "Soon the day will come when freedom rings", reflecting the politicised tone of Spectre – watch the video above, listen to our exclusive stream of the album here and read our review here.
