Armed with transgressive audacity that got them into actual trouble in the final days of the former Yugoslavia and a seemingly boundless capacity for provocative irony unfolding on many different levels and layers (to the point of continuously confounding those seeking for a clear “message”), Laibach have probably achieved the closest expression in music to what authors like Orwell or Anthony Burgess explored in literature (with added post-modern jest), in a multimedia aesthetic spectacle where ritual, symbol and sound purposefully converge.
Before the adoption of a more accessible sound and explicitly humorous modes (such as their famous covers), Laibach’s music was defined by a martially austere depiction of totalitarian claustrophobia, evoking a nightmare of constant surveillance and the might of spectral forces rummaging through kafkaesque offices and empty streets bordered by soviet apartment blocks.
The music on “Sketches from the Red Districts” mainly consists of reworked material from this phase (in the vein of what the band presented on “Laibach Revisited”). As such, Laibach is first and foremost intent on delivering an atmosphere of utter menace. Labyrinthic, claustrophobic corridors and open spaces of industrial decay are summoned through a carefully-crafted dark ambiance of ominous synthesizers, rhythmic pulses and a plethora of sounds and samples that are a staple of the band’s habitual ingeniousness, all tied together by the voice of Milan Fras hovering like the calm command of a dictatorial ruler or divinity (like OMM-0910 from THX 1138), to which are added guest vocalist Kaja Blazinšek’s utterances, in all aspects reminiscent of the cold instructions emitted from the communicator of an immense factory.
The music will often start modestly or even sparsely and follow a pattern of growing intensity, a good case in point being the 13-minute track 5 with its immersion in chaotic industrial samples after a buildup similar to that of the other songs. The electronic pulses that form the backbone of tracks like “Smrt in pogin” seem wholly devoted to establishing a visceral sense of anxiety that is consistently maintained and developed into varying nuances through the addition of vocals and a multitude of sound effects that make up the primary unit of industrial music’s language (at least in its earliest, purest incarnation, of which the band’s early phase is a major representative). Others, like “Moralna zaslomba“, will start from the sampling, in this case a host of sounds including what appears to be faulty electrical circuitry, to convey the constant fear that characterizes the sound-picture that they’re trying to lay down. Even when the songs occasionally explode, it is this sense of permanent dread and antecipation, much more than the actual moment where the police baton is struck, that defines the music.
The album’s cover (as should always be the case) provides a very good visual counterpart to the musical landscapes we’re presented: images of desolation and dereliction, ghastly presences and memories, abandoned industrial complexes still haunted by the ghosts of the supervisors, inspectors and common workers who, ignorant of their deaths, keep performing their tasks as if the place was still running exactly like in its heyday.
To our contemporary, globalized, neoliberal consciousness, the (often caricatural) imagery of the Soviet side of the Cold War (its spaces, sounds, aesthetics) often appears as an exotic and (like all distant memories, specially cultural ones) unreal mirage fully absorbed into the sprawling data-bank of global culture. In this sense, it is highly appropriate that the album, recorded during the last breaths of that doomed era, has been kept and released only this year, as if the band were essentially trying to unearth this strange and disturbing testimony of an epoch in order to reveal it in its plain reality, allowing the hypnosis of its dark power to shine through. In this, the vivid recollections of Sketches of the Red Districts tear the veil of all the superficial and/or ironic depictions and representations this corner of history has been subjected to (like Hollywood spy films and all such pastiches).
… But again, this being Laibach, who knows for sure? Certainly (and specially given that the material is reworked), this album is itself an artistic representation (the act of remembering is never flawless and always filtered by personal sensibility); plus, those familiar with the band’s tactics (chief among them being ambiguity) will know that this can just as easily be an attempt at a shocking reminder of the reality beneath the cultural simulacra (though that would be too “prime time documentary”), a proud piece of that very simulacra, wearing its artificiality on its sleeve (perhaps playing with exaggerated perceptions of paranoia and fear projected on this time/place/aesthetic), or none of those at all. What the band did explicitly state is that the album examines the “genesis of of the band’s formation in the industrial town of Trbovlje in 1980” from the distance of time, a vague indication that nonetheless contains the essential.
In any case, this album will obviously be a certified treat for fans of the band’s earlier material, and even more so for those who (like me) find in that era their best output. Although significantly more accessible than works like “Laibach” or “Nova Akropola” (in great part due to the liberal use of more modern electronics and production style), the environment of suffocating menace is admirably preserved. As far as forging a powerful, oppressive and very expressive musical environment goes, it easily rivals those two albums, as well as practically everything being put out in any genre right now. All in all, a further testament to Laibach’s ability to express their many, complex ideias through a multitude of different formats.
