Abbildungen Varieté is the second most important name in Yugoslav/Slovenian oldschool industrial scene of the 1980s besides Laibach. They hailed from Slovenia's second largest city Maribor in the northeastern-most part of Slovenia, then one of the biggest Yugoslav heavy industry centres. Unfortunately, little is known about
Abbildungen Varieté. We know that it that existed in the period between 1982-1987, that it was close to the Neue Slowenische Kunst (German for "New Slovenian Art") movement and that its members were Marko Ornik, Igor Zupe, Goran Majcen, Leonard Rubins and Branko Mirt. Besides the eponymous cassette release
Abbildungen Varieté (Galerija ŠKUC Izdaja-Ljubljana, 1983) cassette-release, the
84 (ZKP RTVL-Ljubljana, 1984) LP compilation contribution with the track
Ishodišče subjekta and a couple of cassette-demo recordings - there were no other recordings of Abbildungen Varieté. The
Abbildungen Varieté release came out in November of 1983 in an edition of 230 copies and for the most part is a live-recording with a couple of studio tracks thrown in.
When compared to the rest of industrial scene back then,
Abbildungen Varieté was a rare bird and defining them is certainly not an easy task. They had a strong smack of ritual-music, which is also present with Laibach and Strukturne Ptice as an inkling and played a vital role in early Autopsia. So the pool of bands we could draw parallels to would be from that milieu: Last Few Days, Ain Soph, maybe even Het Zweet. Sound-wise it's quite diverse: a bit of sinister tribal drumming with frantic clamor, a bit of solemn ceremonial chanting and a bit of ominous funeral dirges for the banishing of the Dead. Rip encoded in 320kbs by pop3.
Download it
HERE.
