Oliver L.
Nice Work of Laibach Symphonies on Piano
Mark M.
Certainly worth the effort. Interesting Laibach side project.
Ljubomir E.
In sync with mundane mores of quantum illiteracy the LAIBACH sound (for this is LAIBACH) irrupts again onto ever hostile horizons of societal sonics and defunct economics where the war is being lost even as we enjoy the privilege of being briefed by way of OHR-SEIN with the smoothly flowing cyphers of their penultimate Opus to date. Silently, and with this Musical Mjollnir, LAIBACH, and Vollmaier, triumph thoroughly , fully stripped of sycophants and acolytes, doing so in near total solitude supreme. Following the LAIBACH track, we came here hoping for fresh artistic pain, our ears cleansed, the Moon waxing, our earlobes throbbing. We were not disappointed. True to their form, LAIBACH delivered generously, regaling us even with a modicum of unhoped-for hope, forcing it onto us, masterfully so. For this is a masterpiece!
Ljubo D.
In sync with mundane mores of quantum illiteracy - the LAIBACH sound (for this is LAIBACH) irrupts once more onto ever hostile horizons of societal sonics and defunct economics, where the battle, it seems, is being lost even as we enjoy the privilege of being briefed with the liqiud cypher of their penultimate Opus to date. This is Musik, and in Silence LAIBACH triumph again, in solitude supreme, stripped of acolytes and sycophantes, being the builders of a building whose tensegrity dutifully inscribes itself, humbly so, on the living body of LAIBACH KUNST. With clean ears we came here for pain. We were not disappointed. We were given even more. An anxiety. An adoration of musical notation. True to their form, ever the masters, LAIBACH forced onto ourselves even a modicum of hope. A masterpiece.
Ruben S.
Usual great business dealing with the Laibach online volk. Deliveries are quick, the CD was well packaged and you get what you deserve. Album is also a killer!
Glenn G.
Kind of Re: viewing Vollmaier’s Laibach
For some time Laibach have been assimilating classical music into their industrial oeuvre: Strauss, Bach, Grieg and the eagerly awaited VolksWagner. Now they have launched a savage counter-offensive, successfully annexing and occupying a lebensraum in classical music. Sašo Vollmaier’s ‘Kind of Laibach’ is a beautiful, monumental piece of music. It is potent, intense, the kind of music that makes life better, more joyful.
The album is based around musical motifs drawn from five Laibach tracks: ‘Smrt za smrt’; ‘Krvada gruda-plodna zmlja’; ‘Brat moj’, ‘Ti; ki izzivaš’; ‘Resistance is futile’. Between these five core themes Vollmaier inserts five of his own compositions to connect and interpose, making the ten tracks of the album a monolithic whole.
Rather than simply performing Laibach compositions Vollmaier deconstructs them taking motifs to provide a structure or framework that he is then able to improvise around, following his own impulses and expressing them through the piano, playing with its sound and tone.
In line with Laibach’s retro-avant-garde principle and techniques of bricolage this intensely demanding piece of music also makes allusions to other classical music through the juxtaposition of fragments, themes and resonances. As you move through ‘Kind of Laibach’ it becomes a temporal paradox that is modernist and avant-garde. Although the recorded album is a fixed, like a monument to a moment, the music itself remains open to a dialogical relations with the listener.
The album opens with the sub-bass rumbles of ‘Uvod v smrt’ that build in waves of increasing volume into discordant progressions over which fragmentary notes of chords are layered. The intensity of the piece continues to build incrementally until the base notes of the left hand develop into a theme that lies beneath the cascading higher notes that fall with increasing vertigo on the precipice of a fugue, then taking up the minimalist theme of ‘Smrt za smrt RE’ where the continuous descending scale loops like one of Escher’s impossible staircases.
The aggression of ‘Smrt za smrt RE’ suddenly breaks into the quiet flourishes of ‘Diskant’ which is the transition to one of the most impressive pieces of music of this century: ‘Krvava gruda - plodna zemlja RE’. Here the retro-avant-garde method comes to the fore. There are resonances with early surrealist music like Satie’s ‘Entr’Acte’, Antheil’s ‘Ballet Mécanique’ and Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ as the piece swings between discordant cacophony, kind of like a bucket of notes being poured from the top of a brutalist block in Novi Zagreb, and peels back into the minimalist motif that blends seamlessly into the driven rhythms of ‘Sredina’.
‘Brat moj RE’ begins with a sudden emptiness, a kind of tense silence into which bass notes are dropped like depth charges or which emerge like the rumble off tectonic movements. From this ‘Brat moj RE’ shifts to classical cascades of notes and sombre chord progressions that constantly create a disharmony with expectations.
‘Obsedenost’ starts with a one note anti-progression that plays with rhythm, timbre and volume before introducing the dis-chord of other notes that are stacked on top of one another and combine rhythmically rather than musically, creating a crescendo that goes nowhere until a sudden syncopation of the rhythm separates the notes into progressions that reveal an unexpected musical (kind of) core.
‘Obsedenost’ breaks abruptly into the bass notes of ‘Kontra – subkontra’ a piece that sounds all thumbs and thumps, but which blends seamlessly in to the most playful of the ‘tunes’: ‘Resistance is Futile’. This develops kind of like a Thelonious Monk composition with heavy notes thrown lightly. Jazz, industrial minimalism and classical motifs shift one into the other culminating in a kind of tone poem reminiscent of Mussorgsky.
‘Kind of Laibach’ finishes with ‘Ti, ki izzivaš RE’ where the machine-like industrial rhythms are reminiscent of the factories of Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’.
Driven and ambitious ‘Kind of Laibach’ sounds like torture porn for the piano. Vollmaier really finds the piano’s scream.
Laurent M.
Thanks for my order.
Fast and secure international shipping (From Slovenia to France).
Nice CDs as always.
Enrique V.
Laibach-The Vollmaier Variations. Resistance is futile! Thank you to all those involved.
Francesca O.
another good stuff from you and your friends...
Aljoša G.
It's nice to hear piano "interpretations" of Laibach work - made as a "new original". ;-)
simon s.
everything fantastic.... simon
Chris H.
Quickly dispatched as promised - like the Certificate of Authenticity!
D R.
I ordered the CD version of 'A Kind Of Laibach' from the shop about 3 weeks ago. It took that long to arrive because of postal delays due to the covid 19 crisis, but was worth the wait.
The music is exactly what you would expect of a piano-only selection of Laibach songs.
Crisp, clear ringing notes played in a dramatic style.
A perfect companion to Laibachkunstderfuge perhaps.
Peter B.
A great interpretation in his personally jazzy view, just perfect!
Ondrej S. L.
Great piece of modern classical. Thumbs up.
Marc D.
Excellent album and smooth service & shipping. Thanks a lot!
Mark R.
Wonderful album, great way to hear Laibach!
