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.
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.
Photo by Marco Pirc
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 Sika. 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 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). Junos 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).
For more on Juno Reactor, go to: http://www.reactorleak.com/
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 Drava(The State), Brat moj (Brother of Mine), and Mi kujemo bodoènost (We Are Forging The Future), as well as a selection of material from last few albums.
