PINK BIKINI CREDITS
Sally Potter - Vocals, Keyboard
Fred Frith - Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar
Laura Snowden - Acoustic Guitar
Giacomo Susani - Acoustic Guitar
Hattie Webb - Harp
Paul Clarvis - Percussion, Drums
Misha Mullov-Abbado - Double Bass
Peter Hardt - Mixing Engineer
Marta Salogni - Mixing Engineer
Yves-Marie Omnes - Vocal Engineer
Matt Colton - Mastering Engineer
Pierre Flasse - Assistant Composer
All music and lyrics composed and written by Sally Potter
Pink Bikini
Listen here
Sally Potter has been composing music for her films since her Oscar-nominated ORLANDO in 1992, sometimes in collaboration with others, sometimes curating or producing, but always with a strong directorial hand. Her soundtrack albums have been released on major labels, including Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammaphon.
Now Potter has written and recorded an album of songs about growing up female in London in the 1960s, as a young rebel and activist. These deeply personal songs make a cross-generational bridge between experiences then and now, meaningful to anyone who has weathered the joys and melancholia of teenage years; the loves and losses, terrors and disappointments, fears of global annihilation (in the ‘60s, fear of nuclear apocalypse; now the fears of catastrophic climate change). Her album, PINK BIKINI, is also another kind of return. In her twenties , Potter was a singer in several bands, often improvising lyrics. She wrote and performed the words for OH MOSCOW - a song cycle composed by Lindsay Cooper - and toured across Europe with FIG (the Feminist Improvising Group), the Marx Bros and the Film Music Orchestra.
For this album she is joined by legendary guitarist Fred Frith (a long-term collaborator on her film soundtracks), along with Laura Snowden and Giacomo Susani (acoustic guitars), Paul Clarvis (percussion), Misha Mullov-Abado (upright bass) and Hattie Webb (harp), to create an intimate and compelling sound world for the songs that tell a raw, truthful story of the early years of her life as an emerging artist. “Writing and arranging the music for this album - and finding my singing voice once again - has felt like ‘coming out” says Potter “I am so used to being the invisible hand behind my work - looking, not being looked at; hearing my writing spoken through the mouths of actors (and happily so) – that suddenly being audibly present feels like a strange and even dangerous exposure. And whilst music making has always been central to my life and work, this is different. I have felt compelled to write these songs, with a deep longing to sing them. These last turbulent years of climate change awareness, with a global swing to the right, deep divisions between different social groups and between the generations, the disorienting pandemic, and the casual cruelties common on social media, have led me, like many others, to want to prioritise human connection and simple truths. These songs, so much more modest in scale than a feature film, try to do just that.”
Listen to Sally Potter's film music here
Pink Bikini in the press
"Sally Potter’s debut album is a gorgeous excavation of what it meant - and means - to be a girl growing up in a world that wants to tame her passion, defiance and curiosity. Potter both remembers her experiences and observes them, moving between subject and object with the clever experimentalism that fans of her films will recognise. The guitar playing by her longterm collaborator Fred Frith is exquisite and the result is an intimate, poignant listen with a lovely, slightly melancholic feel."
MIRANDA SAWYER - BBC RADIO 6
"Potter's singing is... in a Marianne Faithful style, with hints of Weimar... she's a beguiling storyteller."
MOJO
"Emotionally raw... full of bittersweet narrative vignettes drawn from Potter's turbulent teens."
UNCUT
"Potter lays bare the insecurities and fears of adolescence…..considering this is a debut album from an artist best known for a totally different medium, Pink Bikini is an often extraordinary change in direction for Sally Potter."
MUSIC OMH
"Told chronologically from her birth to her emergence into adulthood, these songs of teenage rebellion cover everything from burgeoning sexuality to the discovery of her artistic feminist voice."
WIRE
"Moody orchestrations, rousing protest numbers and jazzy nods to Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker."
THE GENTLEWOMAN
"Sally Potter's first solo album, Pink Bikini, is as vivid, enticing and emotionally potent as you’d expect from an artist with her keen eye and ear and restless creativity."
MARK CARO - CAROPOP
Black Mascara music video
“Black Mascara was one of the earliest tracks I wrote for Pink Bikini, an album of songs based on a look back over my shoulder to the despairs and longings of my turbulent teenage years; a time of change: the end of childhood, the beginning of life as an adult,” Potter said.
“Making the video was a different kind of return. It needed to be made in the way I made films when I first started as a teenager. Back then I had no money, training, or equipment. The need to invent and imagine things out of nothing became part of a philosophy I later named ‘Barefoot Filmmaking’. It meant working with minimal means, borrowing gear, and working with the goodwill and energy of a few beloved friends and co-conspirators.” Sally Potter