Name: Anti-Clock
Brand: Jane Arden and Jack Bond

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

LOW11

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "LOW11"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

Colour

black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2021-03-26

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

5056321644084

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "5056321644084"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Jane Arden and Jack Bond

Genre GB

Soundtracks

Label GB

Low Company

What do you think of when you think of British film? Probably not the 1979 ‘puzzle picture’ that is Anti-Clock. And yet, for anyone who has seen this extraordinary film, it would be unlikely that they could forget it. Its sounds and images burn into the brain. It’s an infuriating and invigorating experience. It’s like entering a dream state only to find that one’s unconscious mind has been hijacked by somebody else’s skewed (il)logic. And the trance-inducing static of its opening sequence, the burnt-out surveillance monitors, the super-saturated filmed sequences, bewildering performances and labyrinthine ‘plot’ are only half the story; there’s that soundtrack, too. It’s not unusual for a film to have one, of course, but this one fits like a glove. Arden sings the songs (Sleepwalking and Who Are Those Figures In White?), and it’s as if Val Denham had been secretly recorded during a session with R D Laing. Its feels warm and comforting, but it’s unsettling too. More than anything, though, behind its apparent calm, it’s angry at us for our complacency, our willingness to consume and to consent to a life within ‘the system’. It’s a lullaby which aims to wound.

Arden and Bond’s collaborative career gave Britain some of the most extraordinary films it ever produced. Their filmography is woefully short - but it’s full to the brim of incredible, daring ideas and completely unfettered imagination. It’s packed, too, with pain and a disconcerting honesty about the human condition; challenging commonly-held ideas about madness and positing ideas which are far less easy to categorise or control. Anti-Clock, their final work together - Arden took her own life three years after its release - is a complex, contemplative piece, and Arden’s apparently comforting delivery of her self-penned songs and the see-saw flow of Mihai Dragutescu’s delicate instrumentation act only as a means to lure us in; to begin the de-programming.

In Arden's book You Don’t Know What You Want, Do You?, the basis for the network of ideas at play in Anti-Clock – the motif of the rat is used as a metaphor for the rational mind. The lyrics to Sleepwalking’(living in a daze, wandering in a maze) also conjure up images of lab rats, of unthinking beings adhering to rules and systems, never questioning what is beyond what they think they know to be true. At the close of Anti-Clock, the central character, Sapha, simply says, ‘It has been my whole life's will to decode this puzzle, as though inside the answer to this equation was the insurance of that peace of mind that had eluded me. But there is no puzzle. And the mind is never peaceful. And dawn’s already here as the stars appear.’

Anti-Clock

Music GB