The Sound of Music is my new Laibach favorite. The song has (already) several versions and my best is the one in the intro of the documentary film Liberation Day.
Laibach has been producing the best videos in the whole music industry and the intro of the film is one of them.
It follows Laibach’s decades-long tradition pretty well: manipulating what original meant to say by subtle, cunning modification and, in consequence, revealing another (and often inconvenient) truth.
Its classic Geburt einer Nation, one hell of cover of Queen’s One Vision, is a model example:
Simply (maybe not so simple) translating original English into German and changing the style into military march, now it sounds like a neo-Nazi propaganda.
Which, at the same time, reveals what was seemingly an innocuous vision of peace and harmony can also be an imperialist wet dream.
The film intro version of The Sound of Music is in a similar vein. The musical style may be way much softer but its use of the visual is almost terrifying.
The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears
The (again, seemingly) immaculate lyrics could never be the same after being juxtaposed with the documentary clips of the Korean War.
Now it rather sounds like a perfect fit for an intro for a new Fallout franchise. Or how about this?
History proves unfortunately that war is in a sense the habitual condition of mankind, that is to say that human blood must constantly flow somewhere or other on earth; and that for every nation peace is no more than a respite.
Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France
There’s a promo video clip of the song on YouTube but it’s (again) a different version. The song sounds similar but the video is totally different.
I’ve been looking for the film intro version for a while and I found out, belatedly, that the film has been available via iTunes. I suggest you to try watching at least first few minutes of it even if you’re not a fan of Laibach.
