Following their first album Stainless Style, focussed on the life of John DeLorean, Gruff Rhys and Boom Bip have revived their Neon Neon partnership with a new album, Praxis Makes Perfect, and a new subject: groundbreaking Italian publisher and left-wing activist Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.

And the video for Hammer & Sickle directed by Rob Schroeder is a deluge of imagery that captures the Feltrinelli milieu and timeframe, when being a Marxist was a very cool thing to be. And rather sexy.

His life and times, and the circumstances of his suspicious death are covered – Riccardo Tursi playing Feltrinelli, accompanied by a suspicious lady in red – plus the movies made from the radical and racy books he published in the 60s and early 70s are also referenced, including Bertolucci’s The Conformist, Godard’s La Chinois and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s endlessly controversial Salo: 120 Days Of Sodom. Appropriately, this is does contain scenes that may disturb, even offend – but ultimately this should have you checking out more from this fascinating, highly political period…