out now: Laibach – Strange Fruit EP [Mute]

Artist:
Laibach

Title:
Strange Fruit EP

Label:
Mute

Cat#:
MUTE678

Release Date:
05th November 2024

Format:
download & streaming

Tracklist:
01.
Strange Fruit

02.
Strange Fruit
(Alternate Version)

03.
Strange Fruit
(Live At Lublin, May 28th 2024)

Press Info:
Billie Holiday recorded her iconic version of ‘Strange Fruit’ on 20 April 1939. The track, originally written by a Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol (using the pseudonym Lewis Allen), was in response to lynching in US southern states. A year later, Meeropol, a socialist, was called to testify before a committee investigating communism and asked whether the US Communist Party had paid him to write ‘Strange Fruit’. Later, in 1999, it was named the song of the century by Time magazine.

Laibach go on to explain, “There’s something that’s still very radioactive about the song; it’s still relevant because race is still relevant. The impulses that Meeropol was talking about are very much still with us, on the front pages of our newspapers and across our social media every day. For us, ‘Strange Fruit’ evokes racial injustice, representing not just lynchings, but racism generally.”

They expand, “Racism is a virus that mutates, taking on different forms as it adapts to a changing environment. Its mutation is made harder to observe by it being deeply embedded, not only in our traditions and institutions, but also in our unconscious lives.”

Laibach’s interpretation of this famous protest song is aimed at this new context of eternal but ever-changing and adaptive racism

Snippets: