After she Let England Shake, PJ Harvey travelled to Kosovo for the stunning new video for 'The Wheel' - the first taster of her hotly-anticipated new album, The Hope Six Demolition Project. Check it out below.
"When I’m writing a song I visualize the entire scene," said PJ Harvey, debuting the video on Noisey. "I can see the colors, I can tell the time of day, I can sense the mood, I can see the light changing, the shadows moving, everything in that picture.
"Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about. I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with."
"The song 'The Wheel' has the journey to Kosovo at its center," added director Seamus Murphy. "Who is to say what else has influenced and informed its creation? The sight of a revolving fairground wheel in Fushe Kosove/Kosovo Polje near the capital Pristina is the concrete reference point for the title. ... 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? I made a return trip to Kosovo in December 2015, armed this time with the knowledge of how the project had developed...
"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."
PJ Harvey will release new album The Hope Six Demolition Project on 15 April 2015, and she'll be headlining Field Day on Sunday 12 June. Tickets for Field Day 2016 are on sale now, and you can see the full line-up below. Buy Field Day tickets and get more information here.
