The Pet Shop Boys are fast approaching becoming a rock vintage, if only by virtue of longevity. They’ve been making records for 28 years. 28 years, hundreds of songs, dozens of albums, and fifty singles. This though is  undoubtedly their weirdest thing yet.

Listened to at home, without the familiarity of the material or the widescreen vista of the timeless, aspirational, devoutly moral film, and “Battleship Potemkin” is an underachieving record of minimalist repetition and occasional, stirringly brilliant string arrangements.

Seen live, with the whole of the luxurious BBC Concert Orchestra, seeing the thrust and parry of the conductor and hundreds of bows in unison, truly - in concert - with the accompanying, intentionally dated electronica stylings of the minimalist music coloured by strings, and “Battleship Potemkin” is perhaps the most ambitious and most emotionally coherent thing the Pet Shop Boys have ever done.  Musically, when seen in unison with the film, the score is a perfect accompaniment. It matches, and enhances the exact emotional temperature of the original film, and highlights the essentially timeless, permanent nature of the film : that life will always be a struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor, of the battle for human need against human reality, that our world is by its nature imperfect and we are all both complacent in accepting this underachieving world, and also both also trying, in our way, to be free. The score meanwhile also harks into a type of retro-futurism that you only see in old films.

Remember in 1969, when “2001” came out, and we felt that in just thirty two years, we’d be eating pill-meals? We’d have robots that do the washing up? We’d never have to commute again as we’d all be inside virtual offices, living on the moon, having solved war, crime, poverty and loneliness with the miracle of technology? The age of “Metropolis” when we thought that the world of the shiny really was The Shape Of Things To Come? That’s what this sounds like… the retro futurism that never came to pass. In it’s way, the Pet Shop Boys take the element of the score that leans on impersonal electronica, and make it warm and minimalist : musical variation sees an almost numbing repetition turn into a trance, slowly evolving into something else - something more.

And it ONLY makes sense when seen with the film and timed perfectly against the vision. I’ve listened to the album many many times and without the accompanying film, it fails to exist as a separate entity. It simply is merely a shadow of what it can be./ It is therefore a perfect film score in many way - something that really only exists as a complete whole, and is enhanced by, the visual accompaniment of the silent film. Either on its own is merely a mere fraction of whole is so much more than the sum of the parts. And when performed live, it’s en engrossing thrilling experience to see the orchestra there in the flesh, making the parts come alive before your eyes. If nothing else, even if you don’t like it, give the Pet Shop Boys credit for having the sheer courage to attempt this experiment, to try something new and something unique and constantly be on the search for something new. Even if the music isn’t always moving, at least they are moving. To something else, some new area. Never then, will they have reached their peak and instead of exploring new areas merely refine them with tired retreads of older, better songs. Unlike so many of their contemporaries, the Pet Shop Boys have never stopped looking for the new and never stopped evoking something.

The film comes to its inevitable climax, seeing the resolution to the Eternal Struggle (at least temporarily), and the acts reprise a song from the score : “No Time For Tears”  - originally mooted as a potential single from the piece and later reprised in revamped form as a b-side of a later single. In the meantime, though, the score again rises and falls and brings the audience to a sense of emotional completion : if nothing else “Battleship Potemkin” is a triumph of artistic endeavour and seen in the flesh is a brilliant, perfect accompaniment to a classic film that everyone should see at least once in their lives. This presentation is an undoubted artistic success - and yet another reminder why the Pet Shop Boys are proof that age does not automatically equal creative complacency. audience to a sense of emotional completion : if nothing else “Battleship Potemkin” is a triumph of artistic endeavour and seen in the flesh is a brilliant, perfect accompaniment to a classic film that everyone should see at least once in their lives. This presentation is an undoubted artistic success - and yet another reminder why the Pet Shop Boys are proof that age does not automatically equal creative complacency.

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