THE WHEEL

My beloved and double Mercury winner P.J. Harvey has released a video of her first single "The Wheel", anticipating the release of her ninth studio album "The Hope Six Demolition Project", via Noisey. Directed by Seamus Murphy, the video assembles different footage shots made in Kosovo between 2011 and 2015.

"When I’m writing a song I visualize the entire scene. 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." - Harvey said in a press release about her trip to Kosovo.

"The song "The Wheel" has the journey to Kosovo at its center. 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. I can tell you it’s date – 4th August 2011 – from the piece of footage I made as we walked up the street to our parked car near the train station. It was a passing observation of a commonplace image, one of many that day. While Polly took notes I might have been more interested in something else happening across the street and not bothered to shoot or even have seen it. That day we were gathering material in a blind, optimistic endeavour; characteristic of the way we tend to work together. We had no idea if any of it would ever be seen, heard or would make sense.
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." - Seamus Murphy added.

The album that was inspired by Harvey and Murphy's visits to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington D.C, will be out Appril 15th. Beside that harvey will be also hitting the road at a select number of international festivals this year—alongside her new nine-piece band—dates below.

06/04/16 – Barcelona, Spain – Primavera Sound
06/04-05/16 – Paris, France – We Love Green Festival
06/12/16 – London, UK – Field Day
06/17-18/16 – Helsinki, Finland – Sideways Festival
06/20/16 – Berlin, Germany – Zitadelle Spandau
06/22/16 – Zagreb, Croatia – INMusic
06/24-26/16 – Beuningen, The Netherlands – Down The Rabbit Hole
06/29/16 – Gdynia, Poland – Open’er Festival
06/29-07/02/16 – Roskilde, Denmark – Roskilde Festival
07/02/16 – Werchter, Belgium – Rock Werchter
07/03/16 – Herouville St Clair, France – Beauregard Festival
07/07/16 – Trenčín, Slovakia – Pohoda Festival
08/11/16 – Oslo, Norway – OYA
08/11-13/16 – Gothenburg, Sweden – Way Out West