Laibach - Alamut (Preorder 09/05/25)

Laibach - Alamut (Preorder 09/05/25)

Label: Mute - STUMM506 - 5400863142742
Format: 2LP + 16 page booklet
Country: UK
Released: 9th May 2025
Genre: Avant-garde
Style: Avant-garde

Description
The album was recorded by Laibach and the musicians who performed Alamut live at a former Crusader castle in Ljubljana in
2022. The musicians involved include the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, the Human-Voice Ensemble vocal group from
Tehran, the Gallina Women’s Choir, and AccordiOna, a women’s accordion orchestra backed by additional accordion players,
conducted by Iranian conductor Navid Goharib.
Alamut is an original symphonic work by Laibach based on a famous story from eleventh-century Persia, as told by the
Slovene writer Vladimir Bartol in his novel of the same title published in 1938. The central character is Hassan-i Sabbāh, the
charismatic religious and political leader of the Nizari Ismailis and the founder of a mysterious military formation known as
the Assassins, whose name is still feared and respected today. Hassan-i Sabbāh is a self-proclaimed prophet who leads a holy
war against the Seljuk Empire from his eyrie – the castle of Alamut. Alamut looked at mechanisms of propaganda at the time
when Bartol, a Slovenian author, witnessed the rise of Fascism in Trieste, Italy, where he lived.
In Laibach’s Alamut, the ideas of radical nihilism interweave with the classical Persian poetry of Omar Khayyam, the sensual
verses of Mahsati Ganjavi blend with minimalist orchestral colours derived from Iranian tradition. Hassan-i Sabbāh’s
propaganda mechanisms are echoed in the industrial principle of the workings of the orchestra and Laibach’s unique sound.

Tracklist

A1 Overture
A2 Secret Gardens
A3 Fedayeen
B1 Transition
B2 Meditation I
B3 War
C1 Doors of Perception
C2 Metaverse
D1 Meditation II & Epilogue