(Photos by Borut Peterlin) Silence, best known for their long-time collaboration with Laibach (which yielded two studio albums: “Volk” from 2006 and “The Sound of Music” from 2018), with whom they performed in North Korea, have recently released their first studio album in ten years, “The Vocabulary of Madness”. The album is out via The Pekinpah Association label.

Attention for the wokies, the album contains graphic cynicism that may be disturbing to you.

Silence is a Slovene duo consisting of Boris Benko (singer and songwriter) and Primož Hladnik (keyboards and arrangements). Their music is characterised by eclecticism, complex vocal arrangements, and meticulous production. The duet’s discography consists of five studio albums and four theatre soundtracks and the duet has scored more than fifty plays and dance performances.

“The Vocabulary of Madness” is released as a 32-page hardcover book with CD, consists of ten tracks.

The songs were co-produced and mastered by Silence’s long-time collaborator, Gregor Zemljič. In 1999 already, Zemljič co-produced “Unlike a Virgin”, Silence’s sophomore album.

Here’s what the duo says about the album: “‘The Vocabulary of Madness’ is therapy for those afflicted by so-called normality, by the ever-diminishing returns of business as usual. It is a committed – excuse the pun – attempt to turn psychoanalysis into a music genre. An album for the Jung at heart.”

The album is available from the label.

Here are a few tracks to check out already.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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German label Trisol has been set up in 1997 by Alex Storm. He’s also running Apocalyptic Vision, which was his first label. Trisol is characterized by a true eclectic taste of music; from EBM to Dark-Electro to Industrial to Dark-Wave, Neo-Folk and related genres. Trisol is the home of artists such as Rome, Project Pitchfork, Die Form, Clan Of Xymox, Nachtmahr, Asp, L’âme Immortelle, Samsas Traum, Mantus, Scheuber, Persephone ao. Apocalyptic Vision is still active today releasing the work of Sopor Aeternus.

(Stéphane Froidcoeur / Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Was there a kind of ‘philosophy’ when you set up your label and did it evolve over the years? How would you define your label activities today?

Alex: To answer this question properly, I need to go back in time a little and begin before I founded Trisol. The first label I founded was Apocalyptic Vision, which I (unofficially) started in 1992, so five years before starting Trisol. In the early 90s, when lots of vinyl albums were being released on CD for the first time, I was waiting in vain for CD reissues of many of my favorite albums –albums by Clair Obscur, Esplendor Geométrico, Memorandum and others. And even back then, I was also a big Sopor Aeternus fan. So I contacted quite a number of labels to suggest they reissue various albums on CD, or that they sign Sopor Aeternus –but not a single label was interested. Completely unfathomable!

After months of investing my time and money into these activities, I thought: ‘Just do it yourself!’ In other words, Apocalyptic Vision was intended as being purely a label for reissuing some of my favorite albums by my favorite bands, as well as for Sopor Aeternus. That was of course naive, but luckily, I was able to pull it off.

It seemed I developed a good reputation with this label, and as a result I received more and more interesting enquiries from bands that I treasured, both personally and artistically (such as DIE FORM). Bands that unfortunately didn’t fit into the Apocalyptic Vision re-release concept. I therefore decided to set up a second label, which enabled me to sign precisely these types of bands.

Apart from those specific re-release intentions for Apocalyptic Vision, the philosophy behind both labels is to work with artists who pursue the ‘total work of art’ approach, and who literally live their art. Good music alone was never enough for me, even just as a fan of bands. What excites me is when artists strive for a synthesis of the arts, in order to then transcend art’s boundaries. This idea of striving for a total work of art still applies today. So nothing in my basic philosophy has changed over the last nearly 30 years.

Q: I can imagine you must have specific and explicit criteria to sign an artist/band. Can you give us more details about this aspect and how important is it for you to know the person(s) hiding behind the ‘artist(s)’?

Alex: As explained above, the important thing for me is the ‘total work of art’ approach. I therefore look for artists in whom I see this potential. What’s more, I’m not interested in copies of copies. Back in 1992, when I founded the label, there were countless Sisters Of Mercy clones about. Some of these were really good, but of course, some of them were really terrible. But even the very best of the clones didn’t interest me. I’m interested in artists who want to create something new, and who have this irrepressible drive; this special ‘spark’. And last but not least, the chemistry must also be right. I’m proud to run an independent label, and for me that means first and foremost that the human element must first be established before a contract is concluded, because goals and visions can only be achieved by working together.

Two examples of this ‘total work of art – individuality – partnership’ trinity are Asp Spreng (ASP) and Alexander Kaschte (Samsas Traum). At the time, I was ripped to pieces for these signings. Lots of colleagues, and above all the press, shook their heads. Today, these are two of my most successful artists, and without them ever having had to compromise their principles in any way. As well as their musical projects, both of them are meanwhile active as authors, owners of their own publishing imprints, A&R people and consultants. In short: they’re indefatigable all-rounders.

But because of digitalization, I also have bands on my roster for whom I only release a digital single here and there. In these cases, I don’t apply the above-mentioned selection criteria quite so strictly. Because of the nature of purely digital releases, this is OK, and things work on this premise.

When all’s said and done, working together should be enjoyable. But even though it’s not really the primary consideration for me: I also need to see a certain amount of commercial success. It may not fit in with romanticised conceptions, but even independent labels and their artists need to earn money. As a result of the major –or more precisely, dramatic –developments of recent years, labels need to unfortunately keep a closer eye on this aspect. If you don’t, you’re out of the picture more quickly than you think. There’s a fitting German saying that says you can’t just live on fresh air. Unfortunately, this is true!

Q: You are already active for numerous years now so you must have seen a lot of things changing and evolving; think about social media, streaming platforms, Youtube channels… but also economic crisis etc. What are the pros and cons of these changes/evolutions and in, which way did you had to adapt/change your strategy and activities?

Alex: Digitalization was and is the most radical upheaval of all. People even speak of it as being a new industrial revolution. The positive aspect of digitalization is the accompanying democratization of the music industry.

Today, we can no longer imagine how difficult –rather, hopeless –it was as a newly founded label back then to get a distribution deal. Especially with a distributor who was actually capable of being able to get CDs into the shops. The difficulties we faced back then, just to get an album reviewed in a music magazine, are barely imaginable! In those days, music magazines were the only medium in, which indies could make their releases known. And if that wasn’t enough: all these problems described here didn’t just apply to Germany, but to every country in the world. As a German label without the internet, and armed only with a telephone connection, how could you find out whether there were relevant magazines –and what they were called –in for example France? I can still vividly recall how, for my very first release, “In Out” (cat no AV 001 CD) by the French band Clair Obscur, how difficult it was to send the CDs over the border into this neighbor country (!) and to market it there. It was as easy as it would presumably be today to export Trisol albums to North Korea, hahahaaa!

Today, the entire world is only a mouse click away. Being able to distribute and market music no longer depends on the benevolence of just a few quasi-monopolists.

And as for the negative aspects –everybody knows what they are, so I don’t know if I still need to list them? Today it’s all about Individual songs and playlists. Whoever succeeds in getting onto popular playlists is guaranteed substantial listener figures. For example, most playlists are orientated towards the course of the day, spanning ‘Good morning!’ to ‘Beating afternoon fatigue’ and up to ‘Gently fall asleep’. The artist is no longer important. Everything is based on users’ habits instead. So it’s no longer surprising that the people listening to music are no longer called ‘fans’, but rather really are called ‘users’. But music is also a haptic experience. Apart from the cover artwork and booklet, this also includes the signs of wear that a record or CD in a fan’s possession for a long time displays. Streaming and downloads are soulless! This soulless consumption also has some quite different ramifications. In the past, you could offer a contract to ten bands that you believed in. Nine of these bands would however never make it, but there was always one band who would make a breakthrough. Earnings from this one band could then subsidize the others, which was vitally important for promoting newcomers and keeping the market dynamic. Today, this is no longer possible. Or on a related topic: protest culture and protest songs. Has anyone ever encountered Fridays for Future protest songs?

Of course, strategies need to be adapted. To explain all that, I’d need to write a reference book. I’ll try to illustrate this by means of an example: When I started, it was all about releasing albums on CD, because vinyl was dead. Furthermore, when realizing album projects, we had to take into consideration that the playing time was way over 60 minutes, because the capacity of a CD is greater than that of a vinyl record. And then, when I occasionally did release a vinyl edition, I usually received the pressing, including test pressings, within three weeks, because the vinyl presses were otherwise at a standstill. Today, when releasing albums, you predominantly have to think about the vinyl edition, and therefore a playing time of 45 minutes maximum. Ideally, this must also be easy to split across two sides of a record. But nowadays, a vinyl pressing means having to plan ahead for nearly six months. In short, virtually everything is diametrically opposed to how things were when I started.

Q: The ongoing pandemic has affected all artistic life and activities so what’s the true impact on your label activities and do you think it will also affect your long term objectives?

Alex: The pandemic’s effects on the work of the label can be split into two groups: bands that play live lots or tour, and bands who only occasionally play live, or not at all. For more popular bands, it’s vitally important that album releases are accompanied by a tour. This means that, without a tour, the releases planned for these bands also have to be postponed. But for bands whose releases aren’t supported by tours, the pandemic doesn’t affect release strategies in any way at all. However, some of my colleagues see this aspect differently.

But the effects on physical sales are downright epochal. Because bricks and mortar shops were closed –and to an extent still are –the pandemic’s effect on the decline of traditional offline shopping has been like that of an accelerant on a forest fire. Records and CDs are hardly ever bought in local shops, but rather sold via mail order.

Q: Do you think media (magazines, online platforms etc…) still have an impact and a role to play today? What’s your relationship with ‘journalists’ and how important is their work?

Alex: Ah, the good old days of print media… those days are long gone. Personally, I miss those times enormously, because back then I virtually devoured all the magazines: Glasnost, Zillo, Elegy, D-Side, Side-Line, New Life, Ritual, Black, Ghastly Magazine, Propaganda Magazine and Music From The Empty Quarter. The latter in particular made a lasting impression on my musical taste. In those days, if you read a good review by Zillo journalists Joe Asmodo or Dirk Hoffmann, you knew that you could buy the album in question. And you weren’t disappointed. Those were still the days of quality journalism.

Today, a lot of it is just meaningless crap. After you’ve read the reviews, you often still don’t even know what sort of music they’re writing about, and how the album might sound. The press hasn’t done itself any favors there. To an extent, they have themselves to blame for this irrelevance. Luckily, there are exceptions, and I’m glad that in Germany, we still have Orkus! as a print magazine.

So of course, I’m pleased to cooperate with journalists who turn out really great work, and I can still see a clear relevance, irrespective of whether in print or online media.

Q: What do you consider as your biggest accomplishment(s)? Do you have specific goals/dreams you want to achieve and how do you prepare and see the future of the label(s)? And what are your biggest regret(s)?

Alex: My biggest achievement is that, after nearly 30 years, I’m still running my two labels. My greatest dream is that I’ll be able to pursue this path for many more years to come. Ideally, literally until the end of my life. There are no special preparations in place for this –only my passion for music and a willingness to always be open to new developments, even if I may not always personally approve of them.

My greatest regret is probably the virtually archetypal A&R error: that artists sometimes slip through the net, and that you then regret this for the rest of your life.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Laibach have announced a six-track EP, “Party Songs”, featuring unpublished tracks from the repertoire of the band’s 2015 performances in North Korea, as documented by Morten Traavik and Uģis Olte’s “Liberation Day” film (2016). Mute will release the EP on vinyl 12-inch and digital platforms on November 22.

You can watch the video for “Honourable, Dead or Alive, When Following the Revolutionary Road (Arduous March Version)”, the first track to be taken from the EP right below. Filming for the video took place earlier this year at the Cankarjev dom venue in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

“Honourable, Dead or Alive, When Following the Revolutionary Road” is based on an aria from the classic North Korean revolutionary opera “Tell, O Forest” (1972), one of five famous revolutionary operas in the DPRK. The propaganda says it was written and produced under the guidance of Kim Jong Il, but we all know that is bogus of course.

Laibach’s re-interpretation was prepared for the 2015 Liberation Day concert at the Ponghwa Theatre in Pyongyang, but deemed too “confusing” by the North Korean hosts and struck from the concert repertoire. The band later performed a version of the same song at Kum Song Music School, arranged by the students of the school.

Other songs on the EP include “Arirang”, an all-Korean folk song, performed by Laibach in Pyongyang, and “We Will Go to Mount Paektu”, originally performed by the all-female Moranbong band, and again according to the propaganda created under the creative guidance of Kim Jong-Un. They are a very musical family there… not.

“Party Songs” tracklist

1. Honourable, Dead or Alive, When Following the Revolutionary Road (Arduous March Version)
2. Honourable, Dead or Alive, When Following the Revolutionary Road (Single Hearted Unity Version)
3. We Will Go to Mount Paektu
4. Arirang (Live at Kum Song Music School, Pyongyang)
5. Honourable, Dead or Alive, When Following the Revolutionary Road (Live at Kum Song Music School, Pyongyang)
6. We Will Go to Mount Paektu (Live at Ponghwa Theatre, Pyongyang)

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Richard H. Kirk is a world-wide recognized artist who started his ‘career’ in the 70s! He of course will always be linked to Cabaret Voltaire, which is considered by numerous music lovers as an electronic/industrial pioneer. Next to Cabaret Voltaire, Richard H. Kirk has been involved in multiple projects (Sandoz, Electronic Eye, Acid Horse, Biochemical Dread…) and worked with numerous artists. He this year released a new album (cf. “Dasein”) under his own name and on his own label Intone. Richard accepted answering a few questions about this new work.

(by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Richard, you’ve released an endless list of productions featuring songs & albums, which entered into history so what does your newest opus “Dasein” mean to you?

Richard: It’s about the world we live in today. Too fast, too violent, too much reliance upon technology, and social media and it’s about my place in that world. It’s about the lack of spirituality, and the manipulation of people by religious organisations… It’s also about the idea of living for now, as we are not immortal (yet).

Q: Did you’d some specific ideas, concept or a kind of guiding line in mind when starting the writing of Dasein?

Richard: Not really, but as world wide events unfolded over the years during the making of the album, the narrative presented itself and could not be avoided. Syria/Russia/Trump/North Korea and, of course, Brexit and the sorry state of affairs in my own country which is in a state of permanent austerity – a cruel ideology and completely unnecessary. The shift to right wing and fascist ideas in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Q: “Dasein” sounds a bit to me as a sonic summary of your work; moving from pure vintage electro (80s) experiments to groovy and danceable passages. What’s your own feeling about this work and what did you try to accomplish?

Richard: Just a progression of different ways of working, using both old and new technology, and to give something that can’t be achieved by computer programs – my own voice and guitar playing.

Q: I think you’re one of those artists dealing with a real ‘sound DNA’ a listener directly recognize and, which is also unique. What does it say about your perception of sound research and-creation?

Richard: I’ve been making music / sound for over 40 years and have learnt a lot along the way, but really I work instinctively and don’t think about things too much before entering the studio.

Q: Composing electronic music seems quite easy today; you just need a few software programs to make music, but in the end most of the productions sound all the same. What’s your perception of this evolution and the new techniques?

Richard: I agree. Too much music is being made just because people can. It’s too easy and a lot of it sounds the same. Really, the technology is not that important to me. What you need is an idea and it should come from the heart and soul.

Q: You’re into music since the late 70s so how do you look back and analyze your evolution as musician throughout the years? 

Richard: I leave that to other people, self analysis is never a good idea. I just carry on and follow where my instinct leads. Holger Czukay of Can, who sadly passed away recently said many years ago, ‘always look to the past or the future for your inspiration in music, never take too much influence from what’s going on in the present’. Or words to that effect.

Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Yesterday Side-Line joined up with the social network Tsū, today we noticed that also Front 242 has started a page on the social networking service. The band posted a news item about their recent remix contest which is suffering a delay due to the huge number of remixes that were entered; way too many remixes as it happens because it has taken the band much longer to go through all of the tracks. Front 242: “The #front242 remix project has simply overwhelmed us. SO MANY remixes! We apologise for the delay but we are working on it as fast as we can.”

Not surprisingly – or is it? – that message is not yet available on their Facebook page.

Front 242 joins the ranks of several other high profile acts that have opened shop on the network, which is a lot more artist friendly than Facebook where – don’t we all know – the reach of page updates has become a joke. Facebook is on purpose blocking every link towards the social network claiming it is a security risk, but what happens is that Facebook is simply censoring Tsū in a way which only North Korea is able to (ask Laibach, they are good friends with the regime).

Here’s the Front 242 link to follow in order to sign up (if you ever wanted to be the ‘child’ of Front 242, this is your moment). Just click ‘Join’ and complete the registration. Users who spam or post inappropriate content will be banned in order to preserve the community, so only sign up if you want to play the game correctly.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

side-line.com

As we reported a few days ago, Laibach has announced they will be playing in Pyongyang, North Korea in August 2015. Unlike other media which took over the press release as is, Side-Line took a critical take on it, which of course was not well received with some of the hardcore fans of the band. But while a part of the fans still think this move is part of what Laibach is all about, more and more fans are starting to question the whole event even if it might be a hoax elaborated by the band.

And some even go a bit further. The (former?) Laibach fan Frank Gorissen for instance has decided to part ways with his Laibach collection “as a reaction against their plans to party with the leading gang of the totalitarian regime of North Korea.”

The money Gorissen will get from this sale will be donated to Amnesty International. Says Gorissen: “I guess there must be guys and girls out their who don’t give a fuck about what’s happening in NK, so you can start bidding. The die-hard Laibach fans who follow their band like sheep without brains get the opportunity now to complete their collection of what I would call “worthless shit from a band that is blind for the suffering of the NK people, the starvation, the tortures, the executions and the concentration camps. Or worse, Laibach admires totalitarian regimes in general and that of NK in particular that much, that they agree and accept the horrible oppression and the crimes against humanity that are inextricably linked to this kind of regimes.”

Gorissen will still continue the sale even if the band meant it as a joke or a hoax: “I continue this sale anyway showing that I disgust the fact that jokes were made by Laibach over the horrible situation of the oppressed NK people.” You can read his full post right here on Facebook.

Contacted by us earlier today, the North Korean embassy in Berlin confirmed us that the band will indeed play the country. But if that is just the embassy people playing along with what could be some welcome propaganda or if it’s for real is hard to say.

Let us know what you think.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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