“People think reality is another word for chaos. But in reality it is more complex. Legend embodies it in a sound that enables it to spread it all over the world”
From the text “Kapital: Death In Conversation”. Laibach 1992.
After a lengthy gap “Kapital”, the most complex of all Laibach albums, slipped into the market almost unannounced, just as the Bosnian war escalated in April 1992. During Laibach’s silence war had broken out in Yugoslavia and Slovenia had gained independence. How Laibach would respond to the post-cold war/new Balkan war scenarios unfolding in Europe was uncertain. Between 1990-92 rumours of an unreleased album co-existed with constantly receding release dates for the next proper project. In its place came the final release of “Macbeth” and the “3.Oktober” and “Sympathy For The Devil” remixes. When Laibach did re-emerge it was in a manner that took many by surprise. The single “Wirtschaft Ist Tot” emerged almost without warning, followed just a week later by the monumental “Kapital” and neither made direct reference to political events since 1989. Instead its violent stylistic collisions, experimentalism and politico-economic pessimism provided both a literal and an esoteric commentary on the rapid lurch towards capitalist globalisation that the collapse of socialism accelerated.
The album was still being digested when a full-scale European tour commenced in Britain a month after its release. Expectations were high but it seemed as if in its absence Laibach had expanded and problematised its own aesthetic. The single was fairly sombre and although many of the album tracks were forceful Laibach seemed to have restrained or abstracted itself and to have chosen a far less linear style. “Kapital” was both monolithic and fluid, mutating between the versions on the cassette, CD, and vinyl and in performance it would mutate once again. The tour had opened quietly in Norwich the night before but there was no doubt that the London show (the first since December 1988) represented the “ground zero” at which the new Laibach operation would confront reality. It was evident from the start “the machine” had become slicker, expanding to include a simulation of the tour paraphernalia of major groups. The “Kapital” shows were the first (in Britain at least) to feature a full-scale NSK merchandising operation. This worked on two levels. Firstly supplying a genuine demand for Laibach-related items and subsidising the tour. Secondly spreading Laibach and NSK symbolism into new forms and artefacts that took the symbolism into the new contexts. By purchasing and wearing ties or T-shirts the motifs the buyers extended the reach of the symbols they bore beyond the concert hall (or the gallery). Yet the operation simultaneously alluded to the conformist and even authoritarian undertones associated with the purchase of tour merchandise (a key element of the capitalist-entertainment complex). The coffee cups and saucers sold made an oblique reference to an early Laibach exhibition poster (“Coffee Drinker”, 1983) based on an original by the Slovene painter Ivan Kobilica. Also seen on candles and shirts was the figure of Mercury, a more recent motif. The impression even then before the sources of many of the motifs were apparent was of nothing being left to chance, of images placed for specific reasons and of a strong contrast between this quasi-artistic approach to promotion and the far less considered use of symbolism by other groups. The purchase of such was an important symbolic prelude, both affirming the value of the images and the associated concepts and involving the audience in the “demasking and recapitulation” of the concert ritual, illustrating the audience’s role as cogs in the machine of rock consumption.
"We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter”. Laibach.
As at previous concerts black banners bearing the cog motif flanked the stage and at the centre was a print screen for projections. The band wore the new retro-futurist image first deployed in the “Wirtschaft Ist Tot” video including cyborg-effect metallic face paint. There were two keyboard positions to Milan's left and right and behind them two bassists. The show opened with the first three “Kapital” tracks and the same woodcut images displaying wartime atrocities as had featured on previous tours were projected on the screen. Then the provocatively titled “White Law” set off a Pavlovian response from a small group of fascists at the front who took it upon themselves to give Nazi salutes. Their response to the title of the track and their performance of their desire to subject themselves to the hegemonic fascistic force they fantasise functioned as at many other concerts to make Laibach’s point for it:
"The LAIBACH audience is any audience which accepts the extreme position of contemporary (post)-industrial production. Identification with our positions is possible by means of the intellect or the intuition in a schizophrenic subject, who is, in the process of degeneration, totally alienated from society (mobilization of unstable individuals). The audience can add to our demonstration the everyday practice of politicising, the desire for knowledge and the dimension of satisfaction.”
NSK 1991, p. 46.
As the show wore on a heated but mainly peaceful ideological debate about “the eternal question” (whether or not Laibach are fascist) unfolded between the handful of fascists and a larger group berating them. Both the band and the rest of the audience were largely oblivious to this aspect of the show but the saluting ceased. The fact that this debate took place originated from the structural principles of ambiguity and paradox that shaped and re-shaped “Kapital” and which define where Laibach “really” stand. The confusion and debate sparked by Laibach’s refusal to definitively place itself inside any camp but its own is for its audiences to deal with.
The version of “Trans-National” was very powerful, subtly but successfully bringing it into the “Kapital” context. From this point a whole series of new images unfolded on the screens. “Young Europa” was accompanied by morphing digital imagery. Other films showed a gymnast and stunning shots of the Slovene Alps shot from a helicopter. If the recorded versions of “Kapital” were structurally unstable and plural in the live context Laibach took the process further - decoding, recoding and enhancing the “originals” and establishing a paradoxical norm of strict flux and ordered mutation. “Hymn to the Black Sun” was powerfully sung by Milan - a move which seemed to enhance the original significantly, adding a further layer to the “Kapital” sound-myth(s). The same tactics were applied to “Regime of Coincidence, State of Gravity”. In both cases the abstract “cut’ n paste” sample aesthetics of the originals were discarded to create versions heard only in the live context. The track’s samples (originally spoken by Donald Pleasance in the seventies sci-fi film “THX 1138”) were successfully refashioned into lyrics and audiences still familiarising themselves with the riddles of “Kapital” once again had their expectations confounded. The process was taken even further on some tracks with the addition of phrases and verses not present on the originals (“Torso”, “Codex Durex”) and the incorporation of passages from one track into another (“Drzava” morphing into an altered version of “Cari Amici”). The shifting dynamics of “Kapital” seemed to impel Laibach to constant mutation, remixing and deconstructing itself even more intensively live than on the album.
Of the more “stable” tracks “Wirtschaft Ist Tot” was powerfully enhanced by the two bassists while the sequence of “Entarte Welt” and “The Hunter’s Funeral Procession” achieved a euphoric momentum. At these moments there was a mythic sense of the full aesthetic power of the integrated “Gesamtkunstwerk” coming together: the videos, lights, arrangements seeming to conform to the classic paradigm of “Laibachness” before veering off again into further experimentation. As if to confirm the principle of deferment and revision “Sponsored by Mars”, a real tour de force that would have seemed tailor-made for the live context went unperformed.
At the time there was a perception that the show was unbalanced, as if it had given too much weight to the still unfamiliar (only a handful of non-“Kapital” tracks were played) at the expense of the comfortable old classics of the mid to late eighties. The triumphant encores of “Drzava” and “FIAT” demonstrated that despite the intensive air of experiment none of the old power had been lost – Laibach could still deploy its full force at will. Looking back the importance and value of this approach becomes clear. The systematic way in which Laibach frustrated audience desires for an unambiguous linear performance was true to its principles. The concerts took the sense of flux structuring “Kapital” to its logical conclusion, re-shaping its fleeting, shifting codes into versions unique to the moment. “Kapital” as a sonic text was the best-suited of all the Laibach albums to constant re-interpretation and the shows from this tour were in some ways the most experimental, and at their best among the most aesthetically and conceptually impressive Laibach have played.
The concert photos were supplied by Joachim Klock who has his own site at http://members.tripod.de/Laibachkunst/NSK.htm Note - the site is still under development, however still worth a visit.
All photos by Joachim Klock
Photos from Magdeburg
Germany
13th of June 1992
Live Reports
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