Book Launch – Shall We Gather At The River

A series of video promos I made for the author Peter Murphy’s latest book Shall We Gather At The River, published by Faber & Faber.

A renowned music writer, in the pages of Hot Press, Rolling Stone and others, Peter exhibited a rare flourish where his descriptions of sounds often excited the senses as much, if not more, than the music itself. In the library of great music journalism file under ‘M’ alongside to Maconie, Marcus, Mulholland…

So it was always inevitable that Peter’s words would not be restricted to the pages of the music press. His acclaimed debut novel ‘John The Revelator’ arrived in 2009, followed this January by ‘Shall We Gather At The River’.

Set in 1984 and described as “a suicide mystery and a rich patchwork narrative of legend, myth, occult inheritance, eco-conspiracy, viral obsession, airwaves, water and death”, the idea behind the videos was to represent the time and themes of the novel in trailer form. I shot and cut together footage, which hopefully like the book itself, convey a sense of eerie disquiet meandering through gritty, small town melancholy.

For the project I made three pieces: a short pre-release trailer, a more detailed post-release version (above) and a short documentary-style piece of the book’s launch in The Gutter Bookshop (below).

Peter Murphy (Website) | Shall We Gather At The River (Amazon)