Biography


The group Laibach has been established in the year 1980 in Trbovlje, an industrial-coal mining town in the centre of Slovenia (YU).
On its foundation in 1980 Laibach prepared in Trbovlje its first multimedia project "Red Districts (Rdeci revirji)", designed to challenge the striking contradictions of the political structure of the town at that time. The project was banned before it opened, which prevented the first public appearance of the group, though not the angry media response which followed. Laibach appeared again in 1982, with their first concert appearance in Ljubljana. This was followed by the first concerts around Yugoslavia (Zagreb, Belgrade), and a headlining appearance at the New Rock festival in the centre of Ljubljana. On 23 June 1983, the group made its first television appearance, an interview on the political/news programme "TV Tednik". The interview provoked numerous reactions, and was followed by an administrative/political ban on public appearances and the use of the name Laibach. November and December 1983 saw the first European tour by the group, the "Occupied Europe Tour" (with the British group Last Few Days). The 17-date tour covered 16 cities in 8 countries in Eastern and Western Europe. The group made a successful anonymous appearance at the Malci Belic Hall, Ljubljana in December 1984. April 1985 saw the release of the first album by Laibach, on the Slovenian Ropot label. Because of the ban, the record came out minus the group's name, and instead the cover featured a symbol, the group's trademark. The 1985 album "Rekapitulacija 1980-1984", for the Hamburg independent label Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien, was also the first of the group's records to gain an international release. Following "Nova akropola", Laibach's 1986 album for British independent Cherry Red, the group were signed by the London-based Mute Records. "Opus Dei", released in spring 1987, was the first album for the new label. February 1987 saw the first concert in Slovenia since 1984, and the first official concert since the 1983 ban. The release of "Sympathy For The Devil" in 1989 was followed by a European/American tour. On 26 December 1990 the group appeared at the thermoelectric power station in Trbovlje, their first appearance in their hometown since the (aborted) project in 1980. The concert marked the tenth anniversary of Laibach and the founding of the NSK State. In October 1995, as part of the "Occupied Europe NATO Tour 1994-95" the group appeared at DC3 Dakota in Ljubljana. The tour ended with two concerts in besieged Sarajevo, on 20 and 21 November, under the banner "NSK State Sarajevo".
Laibach is mainly oriented into popular media, although it associated different levels of work from the beginning, including gallery and theatre installments. It had performed in as many territories as ex-Yugoslavia, Germany, Great Britain, USA and Canada, Austria, Benelux, Scandinavia, Middle and Eastern Europe, Italy, France, Switzerland and Greece.
Laibach has played in worlds most known halls such as Bloomsbury Theatre, Sadlers Whells Theatre, Queen Elisabeth Hall, Riverside Studios, Astoria Theatre, Town And Country, Union Chapel (all in London), Manchester Pollytechnic (Manchester), James A. Doolitle Theatre, Scream Theatre and The Palace (Los Angeles, Hollywood), Moore Theatre (Seattle), The Kitchen, The Palladium and The Limelight (New York), Opera House (Toronto), Park West Theatre (Chicago), Deutsches Schauspielhaus (Hamburg), Volksbuehne, Loft and E-Werk (Berlin), Teatro Verdi (Genoa), Teatro Miella (Trieste), Lucerna (Prague), Museum of Modern Art (Stockholm), Theatre Gorbunova (Moscow), Great Tivoli Hall (Ljubljana), Sports Hall (Zagreb), National Theatre (Sarajevo), etc.
Laibach participated on important festivals such as LIFT in London, L.A. Festival of Art in California, New York Seminar of Music in N.Y., Wiener Festwoche in Vienna, Biennal of New Music in Zagreb, BITEF in Belgrade, etc.
In sixteen years it has published 15 LP records (among these three double LP's) and numerous amount of singles and cassettes. It has created music for fifteen theatre productions and strongly participated in some of these projects: Baptism Under Triglav (NSK/Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre, Cankarjev dom), No Fire Escape In Hell (Michael Clark and Co.), Macbeth (Shakespeare/Wilfried Minks, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg), Noordung Prayer Machine (Cosmocinetical Cabinet Noordung, SNG Opera Ljubljana), etc.
On Laibach and NSK several documentary and full length movies and 10 video spots had been filmed. Some of the important films are:
- Pobjeda pod suncem (Victory under the Sun)/directed by Goran Gajic
- Bravo/directed by Peter Vezjak and Daniel Landin
- Prerokbe ognja (Predictions of Fire)/directed by Michael Benson
In 1984 Laibach has established (together with Irwin group of painters and a Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre group) wider, unformal organisation and esthetical movement NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst). Today the main NSK groups are: Laibach, Irwin, Noordung, New Collectivism Studio, Department of Pure and Applied Philosophy, while there is a number of flexible subdivisions which emerge as the need arise and dissolve under own inertia. NSK had in at least in ex-Yugoslavia and Slovenia strongly marked the eighties and develops in the nineties with an establishment of the NSK State with its own passports, proclamations, embassies, consulates, stamps, etc.
Laibach participated in several books, but the most important is NSK Monography, published in 1992 by AMOK Press in USA and Graficki zavod Hrvatske (Graphical Association of Croatia).
Laibach works and lives in Ljubljana, its record company is Mute Records from London.