Photo by Maria Mochnacz
The one and only PJ HARVEY has released a music video for The Wheel, the first single of her anticipated new album The Hope Six Demolition Project. It was shot by Seamus Murphy, containing footage shot in Kosovo between 2011 and 2015, partly also with PJ HARVEY paying a visit. The song itself was insipired by the singers experiences in the country as the director points out via Noisey.
Was that sight alone the inspiration for the song? Without being told the stories of people who had suffered during the war, without visiting villages abandoned through ethnic cleansing and cycles of vengeance, without experiencing the different perceptions of people with shared histories, could the song have been written?
Murphy continues to mention that the current refugee crisis also had an effect on the song and clip:
Making the film for ‘The Wheel’ involved a mix of footage from the first trip in 2011, rehearsals I shot of Polly in London and the most recent trip to Kosovo. The enormous refugee crisis in Europe had been news for months. I spent some time on the Greek and Macedonian borders, and in Serbia, before traveling into Kosovo. It was happening in and through territories associated with recent conflicts in Kosovo and the wider Balkans. The idea of cycles, wheels and repetition once again being all too apparent and necessary to make.
The Hope Six Demolition Project arrives on April 15, five years after her critically acclaimed record Let England Shake. Witness the clip for The Wheel right here.
—