Laibach’s ‘Musick’ Processes the Hypermarket Sound

Laibach’s latest project arrives as a deliberate turn toward the saccharine surfaces of global pop. On Musick, the Slovenian group replaces old ideological spectres with the neon-lit circuits of late-stage entertainment. They’ve pulled in a cross-section of local and international voices: Manca Trampuš of Koala Voice, pop singer Senidah, MRFY’s Gregor Strasbergar, producer Richard X, and Ghanaian artist Wiyaala. The album isn’t a parody, exactly. It’s more like a refinery, feeding K-pop, Europop, and modern African club rhythms through Laibach’s own mechanisms until the output feels both completely familiar and quietly unsettling.

The title track’s video sets the visual tone: dancers in a Stalinist-era tower in Riga, a place once called Stalin’s birthday cake. The imagery nods backward but the music sticks to the present tense. References to Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, and Mozart get blended into the mix, casual one-liners that don’t demand decoding. Lyrics move through flat utopian phrases without ever breaking character. It’s a poptimist’s paradise on the surface, all glossy and frictionless, like the slush inside a machine.

Yet Musick keeps its teeth. The opener is sharp and theatrical, setting up a logic the record follows without flinching. ‘Fluid Emancipation’ follows immediately, a track that actually sticks, carrying its bright production with something closer to insistence than irony. Laibach have always known how to reflect our own impulses back at us. Here they simply use the tools already in circulation. The result is less commentary than a kind of cultural processing, one that feels weirdly addictive and a little too recognizable all at once.