Pet Shop Boys: an amazing London freebie on a Sabbath

Our Mayor Ken Livingstone can be annoying about a lot of things - his congestion charging and public transport handling are a Marx Bros comedy - but he sometimes does something that may endear him to the citizens who voted against him. Such as the highlight of his Trafalgar Square Summer programme [in association with Institute of Contemporary Arts], the Pet Shop Boys' re-soundtracking a movie classic.

Sergei Eisenstein's landmark silent film [from 1925] 'Battleship Potemkin' was projected on a giant screen and the PSB duo, augmented by the 26-piece Dresden Sinfoniker orchestra, performed an entirely new score for thousands of people [estimate being 15K] - all for free.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are surely the only intelligent electro-popster act who can undertake such humongous task and come up trumps. Despite the historic visuals, the new soundtrack was as modern as tomorrow and at the beginning it did feel a bit odd to have black‘n‘white imagery backed by synthesised sounds, reminding few of us - old enough among the crowd - of Giorgio Moroder’s re-sounding of ‘Metropolis’ of precisely 20 years ago.

Still, the film about unhappy Russians in 1905 also appeared to bear a message for contemporary Britain inasmuch that it was taking place at the Square renown for its political demonstrations. Since its completion in 1843 - there have been 1,322 demos against variety of issues, from anti-apartheid [South Africa’s house is on side] to tax poll ‘riots’ to anti-Iraqi aggression.

The famous Odessa Steps massacre scene was accompanied by Neil Tennant singing “How come we went to war?”, the sailors arguing with officers over rotten meat [that had prompted the uprising] was backed by lines from the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ about daily bread. The mainly instrumental OST was never bombastic but perfectly functional, fitting and yet easily recognizable as the PSB work.

“The idea of creating the sound for a silent movie, and performing alongside it, so the music is half the experience, appealed to us,” Neil T. told London’s paper, Evening Standard. “As did the idea of screening such an overtly political work in Trafalgar Square, a public space designed to celebrate Empire, that has become a stage for political protest, from poll tax riots to CND demos to rallies opposing war in Iraq.”

Upon watching the film [before the scoring could commence], Chris disagreed with Neil who teased with it being a piece of Bolshevik propaganda: “It‘s actually a very romantic ideal of what a revolution should be” and this idea inspired the music.

The score was recorded with Sinfoniker in Berlin in July, a continuous 73-minute piece of music featuring recurring themes and three songs and, hopefully, will appear on a disc in not so distant future.

The Shostakovich’s score that usually accompanies ‘Potemkin’ was not a commissioned soundtrack but his Fifth symphony cut-up. Eisenstein apparently thought the film should have a new soundtrack every 10 years, and later formed a close working relationship with Prokofiev, who scored ‘Alexander Nevsky’ and ‘Ivan The Terrible’ for him. There were also separate scores composed for English and German premiers of ‘BP’ and that a new one was written as recently as last year, in Canada.

This grandiose occasion couldn’t be even spoilt by a drizzle and proved that PSB is a unit still as ambitious and as innovative after nearly a couple of decades in the biz. A learned triumph for the city, so much so…