Nick Cave’s Idiot Prayer virtual concert will enjoy a second life as an album release and cinematic experience.
The Australian alternative rock icon’s solo show at Alexandra Palace will be issued as a 22-track double album, from Nov. 20. The live set will be available on vinyl, CD and streaming services worldwide.
Before that, the Idiot Prayer concert film will hit cinemas globally on Nov. 5 through a collaboration with Trafalgar Releasing. Movie-goers will be treated to an extended cut, with four previously-unseen performances.
Until now, the Cave’s all-alone gig was available as an online-only, ticketed event.
For the special performance, Cave played a stripped-back set at the piano, returning to early Bad Seeds works, and more recent songs from his Grinderman project and the Australian Music Prize-nominated Ghosteen album.
Reflecting on recent months, Cave says the silence of the lockdown sparked “the idea of not only recording the songs, but also filming them.”
On June 19, he recounts, “surrounded by Covid officers with tape measures and thermometers, masked-up gaffers and camera operators, nervous looking technicians and buckets of hand gel, we created something very strange and very beautiful that spoke into this uncertain time, but was in no way bowed by it.”
Cave continues, “This is the album taken from that film. It is a prayer into the void – alone at Alexandra Palace – a souvenir from a strange and precarious moment in history. I hope you enjoy it.”
Recorded in Ally Pally’s cavernous West Hall during the lockdown, Cave’s set was captured on film by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, edited by Nick Emerson, and the audio was recorded by Dom Monks.
Tickets for the film go on sale Sept. 10, excluding the U.S. where the details will be announced in due course.
The ARIA Hall of Famer and his Bad Seeds will take their show on the road for a pan-European tour in Spring and Summer 2021, due to kick off April 10 at Sportpaleis in Antwerp, Belgium.