Artist: | GENESIS P-ORRIDGE & DAVE BALL | |
Title: | Imagining October | |
Format: | Etched 12" Vinyl in full colour sleeve. | |
Year: | 06.05.2022 | |
Label: | Cold Spring | |
Tracklist: | ||
Info: | Official soundtrack to Derek
Jarman's 1984 short film "Imagining October", with music recorded by
Derek's friend and collaborator Genesis P-Orridge (Psychic TV,
Throbbing Gristle), and Dave Ball (Soft Cell, The Grid). Limited
Edition 12" vinyl featuring a beautiful etched B-Side. Features liner
notes by James Mackay (Jarman's producer, collaborator and archivist).
Derek Jarman put together a programme of films for the London Film
Festival, reflecting the cutting edge of the London avant-garde of the
time. Recorded at the same time as "The Angelic Conversation",
"Imagining October" was filmed in the Eisenstein Museum in Moscow,
Vladimir Mayakovsky's grave at Novodevichy Cemetery, the GUM department
store facing red square, and the fire temples of Baku in Azerbaijan.
The painting sequences with a group of soldiers (Angus Cook, Stephen
Thrower, Peter Doig and Keir Wahid) was filmed in London. Jarman
considered it one of the best, if not the best, of his shorter works.
It was intended as an agit-prop work and the combination of music and
imagery remains powerful to this day. "The heroism of
revolution through the queered lens... It was not just the Soviet Union
censoring books, Jarman points out here, but Thatcher's government and
its homophobia was no greater friend to gays than the regime on the
other side of the Iron Curtain. A moral hysteria surrounding AIDs was
sweeping Britain, the miner's strike was in full swing (an action
supported by gay activists, as it was brutally broken up by police):
back home, society seemed on a knife edge" (ArtReview). |