“Everything that we write is a love song.” - Crass,Yes Sir, I Will

Recorded towards the end of Crass’ seven year social bombardment and previously released in 1985 on vinyl, Acts of Love was Penny Rimbaud’s ‘other voice’. Fifty poems written from 1968 to 1973, set to music – classical, jazz and avant garde – composed by Rimbaud and performed by Eve Libertine.

Penny Rimbaud: “Throughout the late Sixties and early Seventies, I had worked on a series of fifty poems entitled Acts Of Love, an expression of the existential/zen hybrid which to this day remains the core of my philosophical musings. The poems laid out a raison d’être far from the political, psychological and social complexities which later began to engulf me. To counter what had become the darkness of Crass, I felt compelled to return to those poems as a source of light, and further, to make them public. I wanted to the work to be a celebration of the communality of beauty, of a shared purpose within creativity. I was looking for a confirmation of unity, a reclamation of the great romantic tradition, an act of unconditional love.”

Gee Vaucher: “For me, Acts Of Love was the starting point anyway – the poems and the original illustrations were done a long time before Crass.They were part of the inspiration, part of the source of going on to say what we did. For me, it’s a return to those roots – not going backwards, but the source of inspiration within oneself. It’s a very natural extension of what we’ve done with Crass. What we tried to do is remind people of why they were putting themselves in a very dangerous position socially and personally, by making a beautiful record really.”

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