PJ Harvey Installs Herself At Somerset House

PJ Harvey has announced that she will record her ninth album in public — as part of an art installation at Somerset House in London this month and next.

Photo credit: Seamus Murphy/Somerset House

The project has been titled ‘Recording In Process,’ produced in conjunction with Artangel. A studio will be set up on the site of what was once the staff gymnasium and rifle range for the Inland Revenue, in the New Wing of Somerset House. Harvey and her band will be playing in this enclosed box with one-way glazing, and her producers Flood and John Parish will be on hand to record the work with the artist, from January 16 until February 14.

Visitors to the installation can buy tickets now, at the venue’s website here. Tickets will allow the public to sit in and observe the artist, producers and engineers for 45-minute slots, in two sessions per day, at 3pm and 6pm Tuesday to Friday, and 1pm on Saturdays.

“Harvey has chosen to record her ninth album inside an architectural installation designed by Somerset House-based Something & Son,” says a press release about the highly adventurous undertaking. “The structure, a recording studio in the form of an enclosed box, has one-way glazing, displaying PJ Harvey, her band, producers and engineers as a mutating, multi-dimensional sound sculpture.

“Visitors experience exactly what is happening at a particular moment in the studio, as Harvey and musicians, together with her longstanding producers Flood and John Parish, go through the creative process of recording an album of songs.”

The album will be follow-up to her highly acclaimed 2011 album ‘Let England Shake,’ which went on to give Harvey her second victory in the Mercury Prize.