Double Vinyl - with gold finish sleeve. Includes 16 page large format booklet with extensive sleeve notes and imagery. UPC: 5400863142742 Laibach and A/Political present Alamut - a brand-new album of original symphonic work based on the novel of the same name - released on double vinyl and CD box set via Mute. The album was recorded by Laibach and the musicians who performed Alamut live at a former Crusader castle in Ljubljana in 2022. The musicians involved include the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, the Human-Voice Ensemble vocal group from Tehran, the Gallina Women's Choir, and AccordiOna, a women's accordion orchestra backed by additional accordion players, conducted by Iranian conductor Navid Goharib. Alamut is an original symphonic work by Laibach based on a famous story from eleventh-century Persia, as told by the Slovene writer Vladimir Bartol in his novel of the same title published in 1938. The central character is Hassan-i Sabbah, the charismatic religious and political leader of the Nizari Ismailis and the founder of a mysterious military formation known as the Assassins, whose name is still feared and respected today. Hassan-i Sabbah is a self-proclaimed prophet who leads a holy war against the Seljuk Empire from his eyrie - the castle of Alamut. Alamut looked at mechanisms of propaganda at the time when Bartol, a Slovenian author, witnessed the rise of Fascism in Trieste, Italy, where he lived. In Laibach's Alamut , the ideas of radical nihilism interweave with the classical Persian poetry of Omar Khayyam, the sensual verses of Mahsati Ganjavi blend with minimalist orchestral colours derived from Iranian tradition. Hassan-i Sabbah's propaganda mechanisms are echoed in the industrial principle of the workings of the orchestra and Laibach's unique sound.