Laibach has never been ones to distance itself from the systems it critiques. For more than 40 years and a sprawling discography, the Slovenian collective has blurred the lines between provocation, philosophy, politics and mainstream culture, often by immersing itself in the very mechanisms it examines. For the new Musick (Laibach/Mute), Laibach worked with producer Richard X, a primary architect of mid-2000s U.K. electropop. As you might expect, Laibach’s 28th official LP embraces the language of contemporary hit-making while simultaneously questioning the algorithmic culture that shapes it. Throughout Musick, Laibach explores interrelated themes of oversaturation, artificial intelligence and hyper-consumption, all while delivering some of the catchiest music of its career.
Interviews are always an adventure for a group that thrives on an anti-individualist philosophy. To offer some clarity, Ivan “Jani” Novak is Laibach’s chief strategist and spokesperson, while lead singer Milan Fras provides the compelling visual focal point. MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland does his best to crack the code.
Musick’s title track addresses both an exhaustion with modern music culture and an addiction to it. So what is music’s role in the algorithm-driven era?
Conflict is no longer merely a private psychological condition. It’s built into the structure of contemporary culture itself. Music today exists in a state of permanent overproduction. More than a hundred thousand new tracks appear online every day—and according to some sources, even several million. Most disappear instantly into the algorithmic stream. Music has become continuous content, optimized for circulation rather than attention. At the same time, we consume more music than ever and can’t stop. That contradiction is central to Musick—being “sick of music” and simultaneously addicted to it. We’re critical of this condition but also fascinated by it. Algorithms didn’t invent manipulation or repetition in music—they merely automated and accelerated processes that already existed in pop culture, propaganda and mass entertainment.
For this LP, you worked with Richard X, whose background is rooted in mainstream pop and electro. How did his sensibilities interact with Laibach’s more confrontational aesthetic?
He understood immediately that Musick wasn’t meant to parody pop music from the outside—but to fully inhabit its logic. He comes from a world where pop is treated very seriously, as structure, seduction, engineering and emotional precision. That was important for us. Laibach has always operated through appropriation and transformation. We enter them, mirror them and slightly displace them. Richard helped push the material further into that territory, making it more direct, more catchy, more excessive—sometimes even more uncomfortable because of its accessibility. His sensibility didn’t dilute Laibach’s aesthetic. It intensified the contradiction at the center of the album: music that’s seductive and artificial, pleasurable and disturbing at the same time.
Is it possible to see AI as both a creative threat and a useful artistic tool?
AI isn’t fundamentally different from many earlier cultural technologies. Sampling, montage, industrial production, mass media, even pop music itself are all based on repetition, recombination and imitation. Artificial intelligence simply accelerates these processes to an extreme level. As a tool, AI can be useful—it can generate unexpected associations, structures, images, even forms of self-critique. We used it occasionally in that sense, as a dialogue partner or provocation. But AI also reflects the logic of the systems that produce it: optimization, predictability, endless replication and the erosion of authorship. So the danger isn’t that machines suddenly become creative, but that human culture increasingly adapts itself to machine logic. Music risks becoming frictionless content—infinitely generated, instantly consumed, immediately forgotten. At the same time, this very condition can also become material for artistic exploration. Laibach has always been interested in systems that simultaneously attract and disturb us. AI is simply the latest and perhaps most sophisticated example of that contradiction.
While making Musick, you immersed yourselves in K-pop, J-pop and ’90s Eurodance. What were some things about those genres that surprised or inspired you?
What interested us was not simply the sound of but the operational logic. All three are highly optimized forms of cultural engineering—extremely efficient at producing immediacy, emotional identification and repetition.We were fascinated by their precision: the density of hooks, the speed of transitions, the bright synthetic textures, the constant layering of emotional signals, the almost militaristic discipline behind their construction. Nothing is accidental. Even spontaneity is carefully programmed. At the same time, these genres often embrace artificiality without shame. They don’t hide their manufactured nature—they celebrate it. That honesty was interesting to us, and we approached these forms seriously, without irony. In some ways, contemporary pop has become more openly postmodern than much so-called experimental music.
Musick sounds playful and even celebratory at times. Why was it important for the LP to be entertaining even as it addressed these heavier themes?
Entertainment is one of the most effective mechanisms of contemporary power. Pop culture doesn’t function primarily through repression, but through seduction, pleasure and participation. If you want to understand these systems, you can’t simply reject them from the outside—you must enter their language.That’s why Musick had to remain playful, seductive and entertaining. The album doesn’t moralize about hyper-consumption while pretending to stand above it. We’re also part of this reality, fascinated by the same rhythms, hooks and emotional manipulations we simultaneously examine. Laibach has always been interested in this ambiguity: attraction and discomfort existing at the same time. A catchy melody can function like a slogan, a ritual or even a form of soft control. The more pleasurable the surface becomes, the more unstable the underlying content can appear.
See Laibach live.