If there’s one thing you can say about Broadcast – in fact, there are many – it’s their attention to detail.
Their debut studio album, The Noise Made By People, was self-produced in the group's own recording studio after having been through three producers to get a particular sound. Regarding the expensive two year production of the album, singer Trish Keenan said, "There were no financial benefits in getting it right."
Recording sessions for the second album took place in fragments at various locations: Keenan recorded vocal tracks with her head in a cardboard box which gave it a "closeness and deadness that makes it sit in the mix a bit nicer," while drummer Neil Bullock recorded drum tracks in a neighbourhood church.
They used samples taken from both library music compilations but also real-life field recordings.
If you can tell a lot about a salesman by their shoes, you can tell a lot about a group by their artwork. Broadcast’s artwork are indeed works of art, which would not look at all out of place in an exhibition. And they’re all quite different while emanating from a singular artistic vision. If we need ever pine for a world of vinyl (personally I don’t), it’s for the lost artwork of records such as these.
You can tell something about a group from their reviews, more obviously.
In a review published in Spin in 2001, the band were unfavourably likened to being "stuck in a time warp–the sound of '70s wife-swapping parties with beanbags and unhappy children serving sausages on sticks." Since this piece goes out on the day of the 2024 US election, I’m less inclined to trust the judgement of some of our American friends.
More accurately, The Guardian described their work as incorporating direct pop while "mixing together influences such as the primitive electronics of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Czech surrealism, Moog organ, forgotten film soundtracks and kitsch ephemera." According to journalist Mikey Jones, the band "fused the worlds of pop songcraft and experimentally-minded electronic music into a contemporary blend of psychedelia that resonated deeply with listeners, effectively expanding the conventions of what could be considered psychedelic.”
Broadcast are a cult band but not in the sense of The Velvet Underground or The Fall. The man (or woman) on the Clapham omnibus has probably never heard of them or anything by them. The bands they influenced are somewhat cultish as well, for the most part. But not entirely. A band like Beach House are a good example of taking a high concept idea and commercialising it. Broadcast will always have a special place in my heart as I saw one of the last gigs Trish Keenan performed, in Melbourne. She was so engaged - surprised, as many bands are, by the reverence great music is afforded at the end of the world, animated, and happy to be performing her idiosyncratic music. Then a few weeks later, she was no longer there.
At the fringes of music, but deep in our hearts.
Tracklist:-
Come on, let’s go, Broadcast
Tir ha mor, Gwenno
Cuckoo, Still Corners
The inconsolable Jean Claude, Lake Ruth
Once twice melody, Beach House
Colour me in, Broadcast
Years and elements, Plone
Springtime, Le Superhomard
Half past, Honeyglaze
The book lovers, Broadcast
I need a connection, Jane Weaver
Estuary, Virginia Wing
I want another affair, Jockstrap
Pendulum, Broadcast