LAIBACH WIR SIND DAS VOLK 2xlp

. Volk /W 20page Booklet

2-LP Holland

Rock / Alternative

Gatefold Sleeve, Deluxe Edition

LAIBACH have announced new album, Wir sind das Volk (ein Musical aus Deutschland), due out on Mute on 25 March as a deluxe CD with extensive sleeve notes, and digitally - with the double vinyl following on 10 June 2022. The album collates music from the acclaimed theatrical production Wir sind das Volk (“We are the People”), which premiered at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) theatre in Berlin on 8 Feb 2020. Two more shows were performed, before the production was halted due to the pandemic. In 2021 Laibach opened the Klagenfurt Festival with a Slovenian version of the same production and performed two more sold out shows in Ljubljana’s Kino Šiška. In March this year performances will resume in Berlin’s HAU, with more confirmed for Zagreb, Ljubljana, Hamburg, Maribor and in the Cultural Capital of Europe, Novi Sad. Wir sind das Volk is based upon the writings of Heiner Müller (1929- 1995), one of the most significant German-speaking playwrights since Brecht. Laibach’s own association with the theatre began in 1984 when they composed music for Heiner Müller’s Quartet, a play that was presented at the Slovenian National Theatre in Ljubljana. The following year they met Müller in Berlin, who suggested that they collaborate. Müller went on to use Laibach’s music in a production but the collaboration never happened, until the head of the International Heiner Müller Society, Anja Quickert, proposed a posthumous project based on Müller’s texts. Laibach explain, “We followed Heiner Müller’s own strategy of cutting and rearranging the material, taking his texts and putting it into another context, rebooting it with music, in order to drag the audience into it or alienate them from it. Music unlocks the emotions and is therefore a great manipulative tool and a powerful propagandistic weapon. And that’s why a combination of Heiner Müller, who saw theatre as a political institution, and Laibach, can be nothing else but a musical.” The album’s artwork and inner sleeve is Epiphany II: Adoration of the Shepherds (1998, collection of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) and Epiphany I: Adoration of the Magi (1996, Denver Art Museum collection) by the renowned Austrian-Irish artist, Gottfried Helnwein. Taken from his Epiphany series, some of his most recognisable works, the painting reflects on two of the central themes of his work: childhood and National Socialism. Laibach have a knack for precision timing and Wir sind das Volk is no exception.