Slovenian provocateurs Laibach are embarking on their first tour of Australia. Ahead of an appearance at Tasmania’s Mona Foma festival, Daily Review spoke to member of the collective Ivan Novak about its industrial background, Slavoj Žižek, and the racism and ideology running through The Sound of Music – inspiration for their latest album.

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Laibach first came together in the former communist Yugoslavia in 1980, and their recordings were in fact banned by the totalitarian authorities. The band (or collective, as they prefer to be known) has been dubbed “industrial” by the media for the resemblance of their early work in particular to industrial bands of the 1980s such as Einstürzende Neubauten and Australia’s own SPK.

Ivan Novak rejects the “industrial” tag. “We don’t really need to identify with the ‘industrial’ label and we actually don’t,” he says. “Other people do that instead of us. We are not a ‘slave’ of an (industrial) genre.”

Instead, he cites the band’s 1982 manifesto:

“Laibach works as a team (the collective spirit), according to the model of industrial production and totalitarianism, which means that the individual does not speak; the organisation does. Our work is industrial, our language political.” 

The collective comes from a very industrial background, Novak says, originally from small Slovenian city Trbovlje, which he notes is “rich with factories and ideology.

Laibach’s most recent album consists of interpretations of songs from the musical The Sound of Music which they were invited to play in North Korea, believe it or not, in 2015.

“The first congress of the Slovenian Communist party was held in Trbovlje back in 1937 and the first general worker strikes in the old and new Yugoslavia were happening in Trbovlje. And this is where Laibach was created in 1980, therefore our initial expression was music, in many ways inspired by concrete industrial sounds and politics.”

Laibach’s most recent album consists of interpretations of songs from the musical The Sound of Music which they were invited to play in North Korea, believe it or not, in 2015. They give the songs a sinister twist but, they argue (along with philosopher and fellow Slovenian Slavoj Žižek) that The Sound of Music abounds with racism, and indeed authoritarianism.

The Sound of Music is one of few Western films that is uncensored in North Korea. Ironically, the song “Climb Every Mountain” was cut from Yugoslavian cinemas when The Sound of Music was initially released. (Žižek gives his theory on why the song was censored in Sophie Fiennes’ film The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology.)

Novak says that The Sound of Music was a favourite of the band growing up and that without it, there would probably have been no Laibach. “As kids, we watched the film many times in cinemas and on the TV. It shaped our universe significantly; we all wanted to become part of the Von Trapp family”.

However, he also notes that the film, while the apotheosis of Hollywood entertainment industry standards and clichés, also contains many perverse twists, with their album therefore “full of sexual and psychoanalytical connotation.

“Žižek has a very interesting observation, claiming that officially the film is in principle showing Austrian resistance to Hitler and the Nazis, but if you look at it closely you see that the Nazis are presented as an abstract cosmopolitan occupying power, and the Austrians are the good small fascists. So the implicit message is almost the opposite of the explicit message.

“No wonder that Austrians don’t like this film very much, or maybe they are only denying it on the surface but watching it secretly in their cellars.”

With regard to playing their version of The Sound of Music in North Korea, for Novak it is a deliciously snug fit. “The … story really fits well into the North Korean situation and can be understood affirmatively, but also subversively – very much depending on the point of view.

“But the album is also dealing with the totalitarian structure of the family, society, and entire state. It does not tell only the story of the Von Trapp family but also about the structure of wider society and many ‘families’ could be mirrored themselves in the film: Trump’s family, Joseph Goebbels’ family, The Jackson Five, The Partridge Family, The Osmond’s, The Kelly Family, Her Fritzl’s Family… -to name but a few.”

“Laibach works as a team … according to the model of industrial production and totalitarianism, which means that the individual does not speak; the organisation does. Our work is industrial, our language political.” 

I ask Novak if it’s true that the purpose of Laibach’s work is to explore the link between art and ideology. “Yes, this is true,” Novak says. “To a certain degree we of course also want to entertain people with our shows, but the basic purpose of our work is to explore and analyse the relation between art and politics, ideology and culture in different contexts.

“Why do we do this? Simply because this relation is greatly intertwined, one affects the other and therefore defines the creative patterns as well as the general perception of ideology and culture per se.”

Laibach are playing Sydney’s Metro Theatre Thursday January 16, and the Mona Foma festival Hub in Launceston, Saturday and Sunday January 18-19.