Der Sturm - LP & Photo

Label: Dallas Records

Release Date: 18th May 2022

Format: Vinyl LP & Photo

Finally, the 300.000 V.K. project's album, DER STURM, has seen the light of day. The material for it was initially compiled around 2010, but the recordings were lost and then sporadically leaked out in various forms over the next ten years, until two years ago when a full album was assembled from the fragments. The release was then further delayed by the Covid epidemic and, additionally, for a further year by vinyl pressing delays. The album is now here at last, more or less in its original form, also with the design, conceived over a decade ago.

DER STURM is a metaphysical album of techno-electronic provenance, with themes that draw on planetary, atmospheric, cosmic, interstellar communication and the journey of radio waves, yet it also features tracks such as Grozny and Exodus, which directly touch on more Earthly themes (war and refugees).

300,000 V.K. or Dreihunderttausend verschiedene Krawalle (Three Hundred Thousand Various Uproars) is a project originally established in 1982 as a more experimental offshoot of the Laibach Kunst music section, defined in Laibach's founding manifesto (10 Items of the Covenant) as a 'retrospective futuristic negative utopia'. The original members and founders of the project were Dejan Knez and Tomaž Hostnik. Later this Laibach 'sub-group' was joined by Iztok Turk and Peter Mlakar, and the first album - 'Peter Paracelsus' - was only released on Nika + Ropot Records in 1994.

In terms of authorship, DER STURM is a solo project, formally signed by Baron Reichenbach, A. D. Knez and Elk Eber. It is one and the same person, but mentally split and multiplied. Dejan Knez, who is also a co-founder of Laibach, experienced a lightning strike in 1987 and with it a kind of cosmic enlightenment, which unfortunately also resulted in a deepening bipolar disorder, which led to personality stratification and occasional episodes of manic depression. His cooperation with the parent group Laibach therefore became rather disturbed and limited after 1987, and since 2006 it was almost completely interrupted, however he remained a respected member of the group on the symbolic level. In the meantime, he devoted himself more to work on the 300,000 V.K. missiles. 

The photograph by Jože Suhadolnik - a portrait of Dejan Knez, added to the DER STURM album - was taken in 1987.