A spring and summer tour starting in April 2012, featuring Laibach live, presenting and promoting the science fiction dark comedy, film Iron Sky. Laibach has composed the soundtrack for this film and will perform selected songs from it live in concert, along with other material including some preview songs from their two forthcoming albums and a set of classic Laibach songs spanning from the early 80’s to today.

Iron Sky is a dark science fiction comedy about Nazis escaping to the dark side of the Moon in 1945 and returning to Earth in 2018. Towards the end of World War II the Nazi scientists made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity. From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right. Now it’s 2018, and the Nazis are returning…

Iron Sky is one of the most anticipated films coming out of Europe in 2012. The film was inspired in part by Laibach and especially their 2006 album VOLK (Mute/EMI), therefore from very early on the film’s director Timo Vuorensola wanted to have Laibach create the music for it. When both the band and the filmmakers connected, the vision started to become a reality.

Laibach’s involvement is a match made in heaven. Their music for this film is loaded with references to Wagner (as is the whole film) and was created very carefully with the unique Laibachian style, sense of humor and dark tone, and it works perfectly with the noir/steampunk look of the film. A release of an album with the film score on Mute will follow later this year.

Iron Sky is a Finnish-German-Australian co-production of about 7,5 million € budget, to be released worldwide in 2012. It’s directed by Timo Vuorensola and produced by Tero Kaukomaa (Blind Spot Pictures), Samuli Torssonen (Energia) as the visual effects producer, Oliver Damian (27 Films Production), Cathy Overett & Mark Overett (New Holland Pictures), with San Fu Maltha as the executive producer. The cast includes Julia Dietze (1½ Ritter), Götz Otto (Tomorrow Never Dies, Schindler’s List, Downfall), Christopher Kirby (The Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions, Daybreakers, Space: Above and Beyond), Udo Kier (Dogville, Dancer in the Dark), Peta Sergeant (Satisfaction), Stephanie Paul (Separation City, Film School Confidential) and Tilo Prückner (The Neverending Story, Die Fälscher).

What makes Iron Sky especially unique is the wide ranging collaboration with fans and community: the fanbase was able to join in creating ideas and content for the movie in a collaborative movie making platform called Wreckamovie. They were also able to give the film added publicity by sharing information online and even fund the movie by designing and buying merchandize and by other means.

Iron Sky premieres at the Berlinale on 11.2.2012 and will be released on the 4th of April 2012.

The Laibach Division 300.000 VK will have a concert tomorrow (8.9.2011) in Ljubljana. 300.000 VK are currently preparing their new album “Dark Side of Europe“.

Laibach and Juno Reactor will join forces on an EU double headline tour in December.

The premiere show of the tour was already held on 18 October 2009 on the occasion of the long-awaited opening of Kino Šiška, a new concert and cultural venue in Ljubljana, Slovenia. For this occasion Laibach created new versions of some of their older tracks from the first half of 1980s, which will now also be presented on the upcoming tour.

Laibach and Juno Reactor first met in 1994 at the legendary 429 Harrow Road, London, where the Mute Records label was based until very recently. Juno Reactor, then recording for Nova Mute, accepted an invitation from Laibach to remix a version of Final Countdown for their single.Two years later, Laibach included on their album Jesus Christ Superstars their own remake of Juno Reactor’s track God is God, the original version of which appeared on the JR Bible of Dreams album in 1997.

The paths of both groups have intersected briefly on several occasions, and a while ago Laibach invited Ben Watkins, the driving force behind Juno Reactor, first to participate as a producer in the studio version of their 2009 ‘electro – symphonic – experimental jazz ’ project Volkswagner, and then as a collaborator on the ambitious film project Iron Sky being developed by the creators of the Star Wreck film (the most popular internet film project of all time),who have selected Laibach to score the music for the new film. Iron Sky is to be completed at the beginning of 2011. Soon the idea of doing a joint European tour was born. The premiere concert was held on September 18th in theSlovenian capital Ljubljana on the occasion of the opening of the new Ljubljana cultural venue – Kino Siška. The rest of the tour will kick off on December 5th and take both groups through the Netherlands, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Belgium, and the UK. The second part of the tour is scheduled for February and March 2010.

Juno Reactor

Juno Reactor are a musical and performing act that was initially conceived as an art project by the British artist Ben Watkins. Having hoped to discover new possibilities of expression within the technology of the time, he began collaborating with various artists from the spheres of music, film, and fine art. Juno Reactor have been performing under that name since 1990, and towards the turn of the century they became a major player on the developingelectronic music scene oriented towards experimental trance and high energy music.

Juno Reactor strongly influenced groups like Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers. Subsequently they kept changing their mode of expression and realised some fruitful attempts at film music, the highlight being an instrumental remixof Control for the soundtrack of the film Mortal Kombat and compositions for parts two and three of the Matrix film trilogy (with the exceptional song Navras). Juno’s music has been used and adapted by many filmmakers over the years (including Tarantino) in cult movies such as Eraser, Virtuosity, Lost In Space, the Romeo & Juliet trailer,Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Beowulf, The Animatrix, etc, etc.

Their live concert show looks like Mad Max versus Blade Runner versus Matrix. Apart from older tracks, Juno Reactor will present on the tour their latest record Gods and Monsters (Metropolis Records). They will also be joined on stage by percussionists from South Africa and diverse musicians from around the world, including Japanese guitar star Sugizo (Yasuhiro Sugihara).

Laibach

On the upcoming tour and in light of their 30th anniversary next year, Laibach will present new versions of some of their older tracks from the first half of the 1980s, such as the notorious Država (The State), Brat moj (Brother of Mine), and Mi kujemo bodocnost (We Are Forging The Future), as well as a selection of material from last few albums.

Laibach announced a special, double headline, concert featuring Laibach and Juno Reactor on the occasion of the long-awaited opening of Kino Šiška, a new concert venue in Ljubljana (Slovenia), on 18.9.2009.

Photo by Marco Pirc

Especially for this occasion Laibach created new versions of some of their older tracks from the first half of 1980′s.
Laibach and Juno Reactor will join forces also on the selected dates on December EU tour.