A Prayer For Derek Jarman
Label: Cold Spring
Format: CD
Genre: Experimental
In process of stocking
Reissued after decades, this remastered Cold Spring collection showcases Psychic TV’s soundtrack work for Derek Jarman’s films. Featuring ritual soundscapes, field recordings, drones, and chants, it’s a haunting, essential document of avant-garde artistry.
Unavailable for almost 30 years in its own right, this collection from the Cold Spring archive has been repackaged and remastered with new art. This classic album exists as a document of the soundtrack work Psychic TV created for the many films and videos of Derek Jarman. Another demonstration of why Psychic TV were one of the most important groups in the world.
The titular track, 'Prayer For Derek', is intended as an invocationary prayer, based on Tibetan rituals; a collage of sounds including field recordings of the lulling waves running aground on the shingle beach opposite Jarman's Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, Kent alongside bird song, crying babies, and massed ritualised chants to aid the late film director in his after-life journeys.
Other tracks feature elongated drones, washes of dissonance, melancholic guitar chime, evocative piano scoring, Burroughs cut-ups, gothic chants, and familiar snarling dogs.
Cat. number: CSR351CD
Year: 2025
Notes: Hype sticker states "A document of the soundtrack work Psychic TV created for the many films and videos of Derek Jarman"
"The Loops Of Mystical Union"
Theme for Home Movies a video journal by Derek Jarman.
"Elipse Of Flowers"
Theme for Home Movies a video journal by Derek Jarman.
"Mylar Breeze"
Themes for a short movie circa Sebastiane by Derek Jarman.
"Prayer For Derek"
Theme expressing personal reminiscence and prayers from 1969/1993 and beyond.
"Rites Of Reversal"
Tonal theme intended for a film by G. P-Orridge of Williams S. Burroughs for which Derek Jarman was the camera person.
Remastered at Jhopdi Studios, San Rafael, California in August 1993.
CD in matt digipak with 8-page fold-out booklet, with liner notes by Genesis P-Orridge (1997)