Recording in Progress

I hope people will see the attention and the labour and the care that goes into making a recording. I hope people will see the interactions between everyone involved. – PJ Harvey

In early 2015, PJ Harvey recorded her album The Hope Six Demolition Project as an exhibition at Somerset House.

Visitors saw and heard this process as Harvey, her band, producers and engineers worked together in a glazed studio installed at the centre of the space. For forty-five minutes at a time, groups of people experienced the crafting of a record, which could have been the laying down a bass drum track, a discussion amongst the performers, improvisation, through to full performances of new songs.

One-way glass and sound proofing ensured that the musicians could concentrate on their work, but the space – previously the Inland Revenue’s staff gymnasium and rifle range – and the people who moved through it helped to create both the process and presentation of this project.

In 2019, A Dog Called Money directed by Seamus Murphy was released, the film documents some of the places both he and PJ Harvey travelled to and gained inspiration, as well as the process in the studio.

Image: Cables, pedals and instruments including drum kit, saxophone, autoharp and ornate hurdy gurdy fill the pristine white recording studio at Somerset House, January, 2015. Photograph: Stephen White

The Hope Six Demolition Project

Harvey's ninth album and her first UK number one album The Hope Six Demolition Project was released 15 April 2016. Every single track was recorded at Somerset House during Recording in Progress in front of a visiting audience.

The framing gave Harvey license to breach the four walls of her own perspectives and scrutinise her music as if from afar. The songs are intricate and embellished, employing the same palette of wailing riffs and chanted vocals that have been a feature of much of her post-2000s output. But they never chase their own tails or fully inhabit a reality of their own creation. – Ed Power, The Quietus

The Wheel, left, is also available to stream on Soundcloud, alongside selected other tracks from The Hope Six Demolition Project.

More information on purchasing the album.

Image: Album cover artwork © 2016 Island Records, a division of Universal Music Operations Limited

Making Recording in Progress

PJ Harvey in conversation with Michael Morris

Michael Morris: Polly, I’d like to begin by asking you about the importance of place in your past albums and the role of place, both in the writing of your songs and where you choose to record them.

PJ Harvey: In terms of writing songs I’ve learnt over the years that it doesn’t really matter where I am. I wrote almost all of White Chalk, which is largely about the Dorset landscape, when I was living in LA at the top of a skyscraper amongst hard lines and glass. Maybe I was pulled back to the landscape because I was away from it. I don’t think that for writing it actually matters, because at that stage I’m exploring my imagination, and that can be anywhere. You carry that with you.

MM: I suspect that the creative process is something that emerges from within. So that makes sense to me, that the landscape where you grew up is inside you, it’s part of your inner world. So it doesn’t really matter if you’re in Iceland or in LA or in New York – you take the landscape with you.

PJH: Exactly...

Read the rest of this conversation

Images: Polly Jean Harvey at Somerset House, 2015. Photographs: Seamus Murphy

Production Credits

Artangel

James Lingwood & Michael Morris, Co-Directors
Cressida Day, Managing Director
Anna Larkin, Head of Communications
Nick Chapman, Communications Coordinator
Charmian Griffin, Producer, Digital
Maria Caroll, Head of Development
Danielle Sharma, Development Manager

Somerset House

Jonathan Reekie, Director
Charlotte Nimmo, Head of Live Events
Molly Rigg, Lead Project Manager, Live Events
Josephine Rodrigues, Head of PR
Francesca Hughes, Press Officer
Stephen Doherty, Director of Visitor Communications
Kirstin Hay, Marketing Officer
Mick Figg, Property Services Manager

Studio

Something & Son, Design
The White Wall Company, Build
Bowers & Wilkins, Loudspeaker supplier
Tickle Studios Ltd, Equipment installation
Charcoalblue, Acoustic consultants
Graphic design by Julia

Recording engineer: Rob Kirwan.
Assistant engineer: Cecil.

Musicians

Flood 
John Parish
Jean-Marc Butty 
Terry Edwards 
Enrico Gabrielli 
Mick Harvey
Alain Johannes
Kenrick Rowe
Mike Smith 
Alessandro “Asso” Stefana

Click here to read their biographies

Image: Michael Morris and PJ Harvey discuss the forthcoming project inside the space at Somerset House (2014). Photograph: Seamus Murphy

Selected Press

As a recording of the opening lyrics plays out across the gleaming white studio, Johnson begins to play the violin. “At the refreshment stand / a boy throws out his hand” goes the song. “As if to feed the starlings / but really he throws nothing.” Moments later, he is joined by Harvey herself on the violin, an instrument she later abandons in favour of a folk-favourite, the hurdy gurdy, while Parish plays the accordion and Edwards plays both the harmonica and the flute.  – Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian, 16 January 2015

I feel as if we've witnessed an unspoken understanding and camaraderie between the long-term friends and collaborators. When we buy music, there is a feeling of inevitability - that the songs were always meant to sound like that. Recording In Progress reveals all the tiny decisions and uncertainties that lie behind every fragment of the finished product - the forks in the road. There has been much speculation about how the musicians would behave differently or even perform differently when under observation but we do not see much evidence of self-consciousness creeping into the performances apart from a wry aside from Flood that "that was one of the most exciting moments in recording history!"  – Tim Fox, The Quietus, 19 January, 2015

Leaving the building I find myself humming “The Revolving Wheel”: At first it escapes subconsciously but then I find myself purposefully repeating it, wanting to prolong the experience. I can’t remember it any more. There is a strong chance of that track making it onto the new record but I’ll never hear what I heard today again because I witnessed something passing in real time. To PJ Harvey: “The best part of any creation is the creating itself. That is when it’s most vital, most exciting.” PJ Harvey has always been vital. The mark she leaves on this building is vital. The mark this building has left on us has been, will be and is vital. –  Lauren Down, The Line Of Best Fit, 17 February 2015

Selected Press

‘River Anacostia’ emerges, after a delicately soulful prelude of humming, with a twitchy keyboard refrain and the curiously unsettling sound of the variophon, an electronic wind instrument. ‘The Ministry Of Social Affairs’ possesses a shuffling processional percussive core out of which ascends some pretty righteous saxophone, initially lyrical but quickly enraged.  – Gareth James, Clash Magazine, 26 April 2016

It involves thumping drums (heavy on the tom-toms), distorted guitars, massed Bad Seeds-like backing vocals, big, hook-laden choruses and really sharp, punchily effective tunes; it’s a long time since a PJ Harvey album felt as abundant in earworm melodies as this.  – Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, 14 April 2016 

After the eerie high registers of Let England Shake and 2007’s haunted White Chalk, it’s bracing to hear Harvey almost back to using her voice to its fullest range. You get the sense that she’s never going to unleash ze monsta again, but she switches between full-blooded confrontation, evil cunning, haunted falsetto, and forlorn laments, bringing great zeal to her often affectless choice of language. –  Laura Snapes, Pitchfork, 14 April 2016

Buy / Stream A Dog Called Money

A Dog Called Money, directed by Seamus Murphy is available for EST and TVOD in the UK across the majority of platforms including Amazon, Mubi and Apple iTunes.

£9.99/ £5.49 on Apple iTunes

£7.99 / £3.49 on Amazon

• Feature Running Time: 90 minutes
• Certificate: 15
• Colour/PAL
• Language: English, English subtitles

Image: The view into the recording studio of PJ Harvey, Recording in Progress (2015). Photograph: Stephen White

Credits

Commissioned and produced by Artangel and Somerset House with thanks to ATC Management and Island Records.

Artangel is generously supported by Arts Council England and the private patronage of the Artangel International Circle, Special Angels and The Company of Angels.

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