Laibach’s release pattern over the last decade has been
increasingly erratic and with the long-term core of the group down to Ivan
Novak and Milan Fras, along with whatever collaborators it is working with at
any given time, it continues to confound expectation in strange ways. On the
heels of LAIBACHKUNSTDERFUGE, the group launched into the VOLKSWAGNER live project
and while most of us logically expected an album to follow, it simply never
happened (for whatever reason). Instead, there are traces of Wagnerian pomp
filtering into the IRON SKY soundtrack, a Finnish-German-Australian
sci-fi Nazi comedy (which I’m not sure I ever want to watch). With movie scores, there’s so much to live up to if
you’re hoping for something that serves the project AND works as a stand-alone
addition to a creative oeuvre / discography. Zbigniew Preisner and Eleni
Karaindrou are towering figures in this discipline and the pairing of Clint
Mansell and the Kronos Quartet has delivered some exceptional results. Perhaps
it’s a little unfair to throw Laibach in the deep end with those sorts of
names, especially with regard to the type of movie this is, but with a stunning
reputation at stake in a very different ballpark, there’s reason to be
concerned.
The
grandiose B-MASHINA is a remix of the daunting opener from 2003’s WAT and is
effortlessly suited as the lead into this soundtrack, so much so that as the
album unfolds, it’s somewhat of a pity there isn’t more of this facet of
Laibach happening elsewhere. As a beautifully skewed contrast, TAKE ME TO
HEAVEN is a piece of schlager and one of those extraordinary anomalies that
Laibach is capable of getting right. It also hints at a more obvious
inspiration the group takes for its first major soundtrack, more than vaguely
resembling ONE MORE KISS, DEAR from the Vangelis’s BLADE RUNNER score.
Strangely, this is a significant highlight of the album and the one element
that has ingrained itself in my brain... I’m still figuring out if that’s for
better or worse but it’s currently in favour! From here, the 38-track album
expands into a collection of neoclassical sound bites, affections of Reichsmusikkammer,
fragments of dialogue and strobing electronics. Some of these dominate
proceedings and are as you would expect of a Laibach / Ben Watkins (Juno
Reactor) collaboration, others are ordinary in a big movie score sort of way,
not necessarily souring the album as a stand-alone piece, but perhaps rendering
it less radical than it could have been.
Whether
you’re Rodgers & Hammerstein or Ivan Novak, any score for a movie about
cartoon Nazis needs the pompous glory of panzer division marching music and
here this is delivered in the form of KAMERADEN, WIR KEHREN HEIM. While an
assortment of brief and inspired moments roll by; classical swoops caught in
the turbulence of pulsating industrial sequences; these are often punctuated by
snippets of dialogue that just sound like Samuel Jackson in space (doing that
one character Samuel Jackson can actually do - himself); indicators that Iron
Sky is probably not the most intellectually stimulating of movies. However,
this does hint at homage to Queen’s FLASH GORDON soundtrack where the most
pungent cheese of the script is laid unapologetically across the score. Laibach
certainly has some manner of history in this regard, utilising Queen as a
populist stepping-stone once upon a time, so it’s not unlikely. The martial
elements are best played out in tracks like METEORBLITZKRIEG BEGINS and READY TO
FACE THE MUSIC (COUNTERATTACK) while SPACE BATTLE SUITE hangs on the main
phrase from Wagner’s THE RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES. It kind of had to be in there
somewhere although it never quite achieves that reich-tastic Wilhelm
Furtwangler quality.
GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG
MUS FLIEGEN with it’s stacked chorus is pretty much what I imagined this score
to predominantly sound like prior to hearing it: endearingly arrogant, martial
and very “Laibach” in character. FIGHT BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND DR. RICHTER
contains brief interludes of the sort of chunky electronic riffs that the Juno
Reactor connection no doubt brings to the project, another quality which I
hoped there would be more of. Towards the end, AMERICA from the creepy and
excellent VOLK album (2006) seems more deserving of a place on this soundtrack
than much of what has proceeded. Kaiti Kink’s vocal on the engaging UNDER THE
IRON SKY gives it all the jazzy swagger of an industrial Bond theme, no doubt
intentional as an accessible promotional tool, as well as a nod to another old
school soundtrack institution. END TITLE (WE LEAVE IN PEACE) seems unfairly
crammed in last after such an excellent focal point. This is understated,
uninterrupted by dialogue and has more substance to it that at least a dozen
preceding passages.
Laibach
definitely has potential with regard to scoring movies. The issue is how to
iron out the creases and remain the oddball entity that is identifiably Laibach
while doing so. As it stands, IRON SKY’s strengths are in the song based
structures, not the short soundscapes, and while there might have been a brief
that required a quantity of the later, there are more ambitious steps, without
precedence, that Laibach is capable of taking. What was presented
stylistically on LAIBACHKUNSTDERFUGE would have been unique and groundbreaking
as a score although whether or not it would have fit with this movie is something else.
Time has a way of being kind to all sorts of strange marriages of ideas, but
with the high stakes, cost efficiency and sweaty investors of the movie world,
those sort of artistic risks may unfortunately be a thing of the past. - BOZ
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