Earth WAT and Fire

Review of LAIBACH-concerts on Berlin's "Volksbühne" on 15+16.10.03

by Avi Pitchon

The irony is that so many bands who champion their individualism and various levels of personality cult-dom, look and sound completely similar to one another, while Collectivist, "faceless" Laibach are totally unique. I mean, who else can play techno beats but transcend the here and now, make one feel he is witnessing this ceremony which looks equally 2003, 1933 and 500BC? A partial answer would be disco heroes Earth Wind and Fire, Eurovision novelty-schlaggerists Dschingis Kahn or avant-jazzist Sun Ra. Mixing modern dance, avantgarde and a baffling, scary, unsettling and ludicrous sense of deconstructed antiquity.

But let me start from the beginning. Namely, an NSK pamphlet from 1995 which included a feature on the NSK state Berlin embassy, launched at the impressive Volksbuhne. A picture of the classicist/socialist front of the theatre, NSK banners hanging from each side, encapsulated the powerful aesthetics of an NSK gathering - the joy of the totalitarian experience liberated from the mass slaughter it most often led to...

Living in Tel-Aviv at the time, I could have nothing more than that black and white still. So, you might be able to imagine an uncontrolled silly grin on my face as I ride my bike straight up towards the same building and look on to see the gigantic Laibach logo looming from the top. And I'm talking about one of the old 80s logos.

I have never seen Laibach play before.

The atmosphere in the lobby is somewhat less inspiring, as bemused fans queuing in front of a closed box office politely refuse an annoyingly jolly sandwich seller carrying this stupid straw basket.

However, the hall inside is filled fast as classical music is played in the background. I think I recognize a Straus piece. At some stage a constant ticking sound commences and the smoke machine comes alive. Then the band walk onstage - Milan Fras backed with Dejan Knez manning the keyboards as well as a drummer, guitarist and bassist.

I was expecting B Mashina to be the playback intro; I didn't think it would be the first song to be played live. The sound is amazingly powerful, clear, roaring. My jaws are on the floor, between the seats.

My next surprise is a selection from NATO - "In The Army Now", "Alle Gegen Alle"; Fras abandoning the stage as the band goes into an awesome "Mars On River Drina". Fras returns for "God Is God".

Up to this point the experience is what I’d term a "no shocks shock". Presented with the bare essential trademarks of the Laibach experience played with total tight professionalism. Distilled, potent iconography. Like watching a kinetic classicist sculpture.

Then its "Tanz Mit Laibach" and the marching-in of those highly anticipated uniformed Teutonic drummer girls, raising the level of excitement and aesthetic precision to a maximum. The choreography perfected, disciplined, almost completely symmetrical. Each song from WAT has the drummers display different drumming patterns. This combination of restrained, disciplined, muscular feminine sensuality completes the picture and only those blinded by politically-correctness claimed later that this setup was in any way derogatory. The women are holding it all together, serving as an (artistically and physically) aesthetic carrier wave of the WAT repertoire, again, played note by note with breath-taking precision and punch. Combined with Milan Fras’ iconic headgear, bare torso and gray secret-order style gown, the whole thing looks as if Boney M were active during the third Reich and/or the Visigoth era. And I state that not in order to be funny. It is exactly this combination of high and low culture, of the popular, populist, modernist, classicist and ancient, as enacted in the discursive realm of a rock concert (the two groupie girls behind me mumbling "oh my god" and discussing Fras' male charm is not at all out of place, same as the eating, spitting and shouting typical to audience behavior watching Greek tragedies) - I am in loss for words to stress the privilege of living in a time allowing this to take place. Instead, I get off my seat, walk to the sidelines where I can shake it. Forehead, jaw, neck, hips, knees, ankles...

Of course there will always be an extra chill running down one’s spine while witnessing a totalitarian techno-pomp rally in Berlin. The delight of being part of a contemporary culture that is able to embrace Laibach Kunst. Where rallies like this are mobilizing us not to murder the other, but to be fanatically devoted to art. These are good times indeed when the most powerful aesthetics in history are freely displayed and hijacked from politics to the most sacred and, ultimately, peace-loving realm of the arts. Never trust a hippie - unless he wears SS uniforms!

Laibach finish with the album's title track, the revised apologia; exit and return, the women now with their pigtailed locks let down, for "Anti-Semitism" and a cathartic "Sympathy For The Devil". They then bow and exit finally, one by one, Knez the last on stage, as a non-single remix of "Tanz", a particularly aggressive and exhilarating one rises up from this scene of aftermath. A unitary, roaring beat. A Laibach pulse.

Epilogue - I attended both concerts, and witnessed the industrial precision and laboratory distance of the band - the crowd's reaction was much more enthusiastic on the second night, a fact that had almost zero effect on the stage presence.

Another member of Laibach, Ivan Novak, was not onstage but present behind the scenes and making himself available for feedback and conversation after the show. Present was also Inke Arns who curated the amazing Irwin retrospective in Berlin, and outside I could spot a bunch of fans dressed up as Laibach standing next to a parked van with sounds of furious Slavic speeches coming out of the stereo. Not your typical Judas Priest parking lot crowd, I would say.

Some people said they were bored, and some reviews claimed Laibach got tired. I can understand that because the band does not offer any new gimmicks or surprise us all by dressing up as garden gnomes or whatever. The perception of the experience depends on whether you consume it in the light of immediacy, trends, "next-big-thing" market-induced mentality, or if you breathe with the light of the constant, immanent spirit.