Laibach’s ”ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA” is a brand new album, the follow up to 2014’s ”SPECTRE”, released on Mute on 14 July 2017.
The music for the album was originally created for a theatrical production of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra) based on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical novel of the same name, which premiered in March 2016.
Also Sprach Zarathustra is an update of the music Laibach created for the play, directed by Matjaž Berger for the Anton Podbevšek Theatre (APT) in Novo Mesto, Slovenia.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is considered a seminal philosophical work, written by the controversial German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most praised, yet also one of the most suppressed and scorned philosophers, has gone through numerous musical (Richard Strauss) and literary adaptations ever since its creation (1883–1885).
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, which was written over a period of two years at different locations between the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, reflects the philosopher’s spasmodic and sharp style of writing, which may at times come out in short bursts or it may be spread out in prolonged flourishes and digressions whereby it might be possible to throw the interpretative matrix over the entire horizon of his thought. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the director Matjaž Berger and the co-creators have elected to “walk” the line of Niezsche’s bridge between animal, man and overman.
In doing so, they have affirmatively mapped out the intimate path of the performance in the direction of man’s inner transformation.
Zarathustra, who “rechristens” the Christian commandment of loving one’s neighbour into “love of the furthest”, is, according to Nietzsche, someone who teaches people and encourages them to constantly surpass (overcome) themselves, recognizing and pursuing volition itself whereby strength must be found and recognized.
According to Nietzsche, the human being is always an “over-going”: a bridge and not a goal, a rope over an abyss seeking companions – fellow creators to share and create with – along its path. Willing emancipates: for willing is creating.
“A project so Laibachian, it’s a surprise they haven’t done it sooner”
“Surprisingly polite and beautiful in places yet conjures up an air of real menace and myriad Nietzschean altitudes and climates.”