For over forty years, Laibach have occupied a unique position in modern music, simultaneously participating in and dissecting the systems of culture, politics, media, and technology. Their work has long explored appropriation, repetition, spectacle, and ideology, often blurring the line between critique and immersion in ways that remain difficult to categorize. With their new album MUSICK, the group turn their attention toward a world overwhelmed by algorithms, AI-generated content, and the endless acceleration of digital culture, delivering one of the most overtly pop-oriented releases of their career while maintaining the conceptual rigor that has defined Laibach from the beginning.
Created amid what the group describe as an environment of ‘excess,’ the album embraces contemporary production techniques and hyper-saturated sonic textures while examining how music changes in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and systems rather than people. Via email, Laibach discussed the ideas, themes, and creative process behind MUSICK.
Stylistically and conceptually, MUSICK is an extremely cohesive album. When making it, did you have firm ideas and goals in mind from the start, or did it evolve and take shape as you were working on new material?
Laibach: We had a framework rather than a fixed plan. MUSICK was conceived as a reflection of a condition – the saturation of sound, the algorithmisation of listening – but its precise form emerged through the process itself. Cohesion was not imposed; it was discovered. The system produced its own logic, and we followed it.
To make the album, you surrounded yourselves with “every music-making artefact” you could find and worked with many collaborators. In what ways did these factors impact your overall creative process? Did they lead to any surprises?
Laibach: We created an environment of excess – machines, fragments, collaborators – so that selection became the primary act. Abundance generated friction, and from that friction came form. Collaborators did not dilute the identity; they exposed its boundaries. The surprises were not accidents, but inevitable outcomes of a process pushed to saturation.
Some of your earlier work was shaped by the limitations of the technology available at the time. With today’s virtually unlimited sonic palette, does that freedom make things easier or more challenging?
Laibach: Limitations once defined the sound. Now, excess defines the problem. When everything is possible, choice becomes ideological. The challenge is no longer how to produce sound, but how to justify it. Freedom, in this sense, is a more demanding constraint than scarcity.
For “Das göttliche Kind,” you describe AI as valuable for its ability to “hallucinate.” What did it produce in that context that a human collaborator wouldn’t have?
Laibach: In this track, we asked the AI only for its definition of the “divine child”, which we then used in the lyrics. The AI traced its reference to Wagner, but we later discovered that this definition does not exist in Wagner’s texts. The AI simply “lied”, or rather hallucinated – which we actually found quite amusing. AI does not understand – it correlates. Its value lies in its indifference to meaning. It produces combinations without intention, which can reveal structures we might avoid or censor. In “Das göttliche Kind”, it functioned as a mirror that distorts without knowing it is distorting. That is its advantage over the human collaborator.
Had you previously given thought to what the world would be like when AI became commonplace, and if so, how does the unfolding reality compare?
Laibach: We anticipated a system in which production would outpace perception. That moment has arrived. The difference is that reality is less dramatic than expected — more banal, more continuous. AI has not replaced human culture; it has absorbed it and accelerated its repetition.
You’ve often reshaped pop from the outside. This time, it feels like you’re operating from within it. Did that make it harder to maintain your own identity, or did it open up something new?
Laibach: We have always operated within the system, but sometimes from its margins. Here, we moved closer to its centre. This does not dissolve identity; it clarifies it. By adopting the language of pop more directly, we expose its mechanisms more efficiently. Seduction is a more precise instrument than distance.
You’ve often worked with reinterpretation and appropriation, taking existing material and reshaping it. What still draws you to that approach after so many years?
Laibach: We do not believe in original material – only in original positioning. Appropriation allows us to reveal the ideological structure embedded in form. A melody, a symbol, a gesture – they already carry meaning. We reorganise that meaning. That process remains relevant because the system continues to recycle itself.
Given how different some Laibach releases are stylistically, and how common it is for other artists to use side projects or alternate names for those shifts, did you ever consider doing that, or was it always essential that everything remain within a single Laibach identity as part of the concept?
Laibach: Multiple identities suggest freedom of choice. We prefer continuity of structure. Laibach is not a style but a framework that can absorb different forms without dissolving. To fragment it into side projects would reduce its function. Consistency, even across contradiction, is essential. And we are large enough to contain multitudes.
What are your plans for concerts around the new album? How will these ideas transfer to the live setting? What impact will this new material have on your choices of older songs to play?
Laibach: We expect the live format to intensify the new material. Older material will be selected according to compatibility, not chronology. The concert programme is constructed as a unified system rather than a retrospective.
AI-generated question: If MUSICK reflects a world where music is increasingly generated, copied, and consumed by systems rather than people, at what point does music stop being a human cultural act and become something else entirely—and is that something you’re resisting or embracing?
Human-generated answer: Music has never been purely human. It has always been shaped by systems – cultural, technological, ideological. AI makes this explicit. When music is generated, distributed, and consumed by machines, it does not cease to exist – it only changes function, it becomes infrastructure. We hate it and we are sick of it, but we are embracing it at the same time. Because our relationship to music is not rational – it is an addiction.
Laibach recently embarked on their MUSICK tour. For dates and other info, visit laibach.org.
