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A lesser-known detour in the Pet Shop Boys’ discography is being reintroduced this year: the duo’s score penned for the legendary film Battleship Potemkin.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s compositions for Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent picture, first performed in 2004 and released a year later, will be remastered on CD (as well as released for the first time on vinyl) on September 5. The release will follow a theatrical exhibition of the film in the U.K. beginning August 22; a Blu-ray release from the British Film Institute will also be available alongside the CD and 2LP packages, including the soundtrack on CD along with special features devoted to the score.

Battleship Potemkin dramatized the true story of the Soviet warcraft, whose crew staged a mutiny in 1905. A simple story of the power of revolution, Eisenstein’s technique pushed the boundaries of the relatively new motion picture medium, with dynamically edited montages like the harrowing Odessa steps sequence, where a group of civilians sympathetic to the revolutionaries are slaughtered by Cossacks. Famously banned in the United Kingdom for longer than any movie ever made, the film’s directness led to an attempt by Joseph Goebbels to make a similarly convincing film for the Nazi Party (an offer Eisenstein indignantly rejected).

Nearly a century later, London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts pitched Tennant and Lowe on scoring the film as part of a planned concert in Trafalgar Square. The duo agreed, working with The Dresdner Sinfoniker, conductor Jonathan Stockhammer and orchestrator Torsten Rasch (who’d recently collaborated with German industrial band Rammstein) to create vocal and instrumental cues to the silent film as they watched. The score premiered at Trafalgar to a free audience of 25,000 on September 12, 2004 – a new highlight in the British group’s lengthy and influential career. Additional performances followed throughout Europe over the years – although an attempted staging at Red Square in Moscow never materialized, and Tennant later revealed denied attempts to do similar performances in Iran and China.

The screenings will climax alongside the reissue of the soundtrack with a special double feature on September 5 at BFI Southbank, pairing Potemkin with PSB’s own 1988 film It Couldn’t Happen Here. Paul Tickell will conduct a live Q&A with Tennant between each film. You can order your copy of the reissue at the links below. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Tenant/Lowe, Battleship Potemkin (originally released as Parlophone/EMI Classics 07243 874450 2 4 (U.K.), 2005 – reissued Parlophone (U.K.), 2025)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

1. “Comrades!”
2. Men and Maggots
3. Our Daily Bread
4. Drama in the Harbour
5. Nyet
6. To the Shore
7. Odessa
8. No Time for Tears
9. To the Battleship
10. After All (The Odessa Staircase)
11. Stormy Meetings
12. Night Falls
13. Full Steam Ahead
14. The Squadron
15. For Freedom

Battleship Potemkin BFI Blu-ray special features:

• Hochhaussinfonie (2017, 68 mins): a multimedia musical production by the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra and Pet Shop Boys, conceived by Markus Rindt and directed by Sven Helbig, on the evening of July 20, 2006, in Dresden
• Trafalgar Square Highlights (2004, 4 mins): a behind-the-scenes film when Pet Shop Boys performed their newly composed score for Battleship Potemkin, accompanied by the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra in Trafalgar Square, London
• Trailer (2025)
• A limited edition illustrated booklet featuring new writing by Chris Heath and Sarah Cleary, and archive pieces by Neil Tennant and Michael Brooke