Slovenian collective Laibach have announced details of a new album, MUSICK, their first studio album of original material since 2014’s Spectre. MUSICK finds Laibach simultaneously celebrating and playfully critiquing our present era of warped reality and gaudy AI copycatting with a collection of undeniably catchy pop that revels in hyper-driven post-modernity.
The album’s title, MUSICK, holds the key to this duality. It speaks of oversaturation, being sick of music at a time where there is so much of it that we can barely engage. Over 100,000 new tracks are uploaded online each day, and an increasing number of songs are AI creations, digital waste. Like so much of contemporary life, the simple act of listening to music now makes us question reality. MUSICK speaks to this sickness through its constantly warping sounds and reference points, but it also speaks to another kind of sickness: a pathological devotion to music – “an obsession, a kind of drug” – which continues to drive Laibach in this era of oversaturation.
The album launches today with ‘Allgorhythm’, featuring Ghanaian singer Wiyaala. Coproduced by pop powerhouse Richard X (best known for his work with Sugababes, Goldfrapp, New Order and Kelis), the track is accompanied by a joyous video featuring Laibach’s eminent frontman and Wiyaala, designed to skew your algorithm in the best possible direction. This taste of what to expect from the album is an audacious mash-up of electronic pop tropes, hooks and beats. In both content and form, it deftly equates the manipulative nature of algorithms with that of music itself – both spells that we find ourselves under the control of. Laibach’s pop direction recently caught the attention of Slovenian state broadcaster RTV who earmarked ‘Allgorhythm’ a potential official entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2026, before RTV withdrew from the competition late last year.
The group took a maximalist approach while making the album in their Ljubljana studio. Surrounding themselves with every music-making artefact they could find- from analogue synths to toys to computers stuffed full with sound apps - they invited collaborators from Slovenia and beyond, including long-time collaborator Donna Marina Mårtensson and electropop producer Richard X. They immersed themselves in a broad spectrum of contemporary music production, from K‑pop and J‑pop to ’90s Eurodance. “However our primary influence and reference point remained Laibach itself,” say Laibach, “in all our shades, variations, and historical transformations.” MUSICK is intensely pop, but it’s also intensely Laibach.
“Alamut is terrible, frightening, but also pertinent; an expression of power all the more unsettling for
its moments of grace and beauty” – The Wire
“Great art in reaction to troubling events is nothing new in the Laibach canon either, though Alamut is almost certainly the most jaw-dropping work they’ve been involved in across a 45-
year career and counting.” The Quietus Album of the Week
“Perfectly, predictably unpredictable” - Electronic Sound (Love is Still Alive EP)
"… stirring, funny and thought provoking" – The Guardian (The Sound of Music)
"… a perfect vehicle for the themes which possess the group” – MOJO (Wir sind das Volk)
https://www.laibach.org/
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