Mischievous agents-provocateur Laibach have streamed a brand new song Ich will ein Deutscher sein, which you can listen to below. It's taken from the band's upcoming album Wir sind das Volk (ein Musical aus Deutschland), due out on Mute Records on March 25 as a deluxe CD with extensive sleeve notes, and digitally, with the double vinyl following on June 10.
The album collates music from Laibach's theatrical production Wir sind das Volk (“We are the People”), which premiered in February 2020 and is based upon the writings of German playwright Heiner Müller.
“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," the band explain. "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.”
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.
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.
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Laibach: Wir sind das Volk (ein Musical aus Deutschland)
1. Philoktet
2. Der Vater
3. Medea Material
4. Ich bin der Engel der Verzweiflung
5. Flieger, grüß mir die Sonne
6. Ordnung und Disziplin (Müller versus Brecht)
7. Traumwald
8. Lessing oder Das Ende der Aufklärung
9. Im Herbst 197.. starb… (instrumental)
10. Ich will ein Deutscher sein
11. Ich war die Wunde
