Resistance

Matrix Music Arhiv reissue Resistance, the 1989 album by Ljubljana’s Borghesia, first released via Play It Again Sam/PIAS, Wax Trax and Jugoton. This remastered edition also includes the exclusive live set Dal Vivo A El Paso, recorded in Torino in December 1988 during a European tour.

The bonus album captures Borghesia in raw, dubbed-up form, with radically different takes on early tracks including Naked, Uniformed, Dead, Am I? and Him (On). It’s a vivid snapshot of the atmosphere and force of their live shows at the time.

Formed in 1982 in Ljubljana, Borghesia fused abrasive EBM, film, performance and new technology into a transdisciplinary practice that helped shape 1980s Yugoslav subculture. One of the first Eastern Bloc acts to use VHS as an art medium, they reached international audiences before dissolving in the mid-1990s and returning in 2014.

Resistance remains one of their sharpest political statements: a dark, mechanical, bunker-like record made in the final phase of socialist Yugoslavia, with a sound that uncannily foreshadowed the violence to come.