The Pop Group - Blood Money (Slow Thief) (Official Video)

An experimental film for The Pop Group’s 1978 track 'Blood Money (Slow Thief)' by Mark Stewart, Peter Harris & Llyr Williams 'Blood Money (Slow Thief)' is taken from 'Alien Blood', an additional album of unheard material included in the deluxe limited edition box sets released in November 2019 as part of the 40th anniversary reissue of The Pop Group's debut album 'Y'. Peter Harris on making the video: 'The starting point for this animated film was Mark Stewart’s interest in Austrian avant-garde film-maker Kurt Kren. Stewart sent Harris a series of images including an old advert for novelty rubber masks. Harris used these to create a collection of nightmarish scenarios, evoked by collaged fragments assembled before the camera in extreme close-up. The light flickers like old nitrate film passing through a projector – at any point the whole thing might explode. The macro view distorts what we are looking at beyond all recognition – or almost all. The something that remains is visceral, violent, rotting. Like the distortions evoked in the eye by a Rorschach blot, what we see is a macabre reflection of the dark underbelly of our own psyche. These scenes from a charnel house might be battlefield body parts, the tangled limbs of concentration camp victims, JFK’s shot brains – or something else entirely. There is mystery as well as beauty in these tantalising, blown-up forms – the way they tumble, ooze and knot – the super-detail that gives its all but refuses to identify itself. It is wilting and pathetic, dystopian views, coloured or discoloured are amplified by all-seeing ¬eyes. The jet-black humour of Samuel Beckett is evoked – the terror and banality of existence (waiting for fast food). A recurring theme in Harris’ work, food is something to be rammed unthinkingly down the throat – soggy mounds of the stuff – in a desperate wager against time. What else is there? But visceral as all this is, there is humour here too. This is a film as playful as it is inventive. Harris is kind to his materials in a way that can be strangely moving. The slimy iceberg lettuce appears to lie butchered on the harsh concrete ground of a council estate; it’s as poignant an image as the shot of the dingy kitchen that follows, littered with empty beer cans – the crushed cans of hope. Another salad Harris describes as ‘idealised’ (each element of salad is colour enhanced until the saturation becomes nauseating). Tomatoes are blood red; bilious sweetcorn yellower than the sun; a vibrant, unreal sky hallucinogenic above condemned flats. The film culminates in the ultimate money shot: a creamy dressing is ejaculated over everything from ‘somewhere’ high above. Interspersed throughout are images of The Pop Group taken from rare archival sources. Stewart’s haunting, desperate vocal accompanies all – part primordial scream, part apocalyptic howl. ‘How does it feel to kill a man?’ he asks as this heap of broken images plays out, the burnt shell of Grenfell looming in all our minds.' Peter Harris is an artist, film-maker and musician. His longest running and most well-known collaboration is with Jamaican music legend Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Since 2003 they have been working on a series of drawings, paintings and films as well as music projects. He is currently working with On-U Sound/Mute Records on the video and artwork for Perry’s Rainford album and its forthcoming dub companion Heavy Rain. In 2018 he began working with Trashmouth Records and released his first solo album Adverts which included guest performances by Lee Perry and Vic Godard. Each album contained an ‘art advert’ in the form of a one-off painted collage. He is currently working with Zsa Zsa Sapien from the South London band Meatraffle on a collaborative music project under the name ‘The Hi Fi Twins’. Animator Llyr Williams has been working with Harris since 2003. His projects include film, television and music videos as well as collaborations with visual artists on installations. He animated the visuals for the Higher Powers live event and exhibition with Lee Scratch Perry, Adrian Sherwood and Peter Harris at The Tabernacle, London.