"Broadcast" Информация об артисте

"Broadcast" Artist Info

Birmingham’s Broadcast transmit radiophonic psychedelia with a sinister, spy movie swing. The edgy atmospheres generated by quartet of Trish Kennan, Roj Stevens, Tim Felton and James Cargill is the sound of a group out of time, out on a limb. “When we formed Britpop was the big thing,” says Roj. “I think part of our frustration is as much to do with a sense of dissatisfaction with the music around us as the desire to create something stimulating.” The acclaim created by their debut album The Noise Made By People suggests they’re unlikely to feel isolated for too long.

Like Stereolab, kindred souls and former benefactors who released two of the group’s pre-Warp singles on their Duophonic label, Broadcast are a group who transmute the sounds of the past into relics of the near future, their vinyl heroes the 60s’ harbingers of electronic pop whose revenant frequencies segue seamlessly into the present. According to James they’re “artists that seem really fresh because very few people have picked up on their ideas.” Groups like LA experimental pop unit The United States Of America or American Spring, conceived by Beach Boy Brian Wilson as a vanity-vehicle for his wife and a space to test out some of his wilder production ideas. “The United States Of America were a group we were all into from the start,” reveals Roj. “They used a lot of weird electronic noises but fitted them into the pattern of pop songs. And they did it with real integrity.”

At its best The Noise Made By People performs the edge-walking act of its audio ancestors. It’s emphatically a pop album but doesn’t shirk its avant responsibilities. In fact it’s deliberately unpretty. Percussion rumbles and rattles as if composed by restive poltergeists possessed of an uncanny rhythmic savvy, or resembles the exotic rhythms Brian Wilson imported from parts as far off as Polynesia in a bid to realise the universal music he heard in his head during the making of Pet Sounds. While Wilson described Pet Sounds’ timeless tableaux as his teenage symphonies to God, Broadcast songs are hermetic hymns, electronic sonatas for souls left out in the cold. Listen to the pop concrete of Echo’s Answer, with its downbeat clavichord triads and shrill cyborg strings shimmering around Trish’s crystalline vocals and it sounds like a lullaby gone wrong. “I think there’s a still a sense among people working in avant garde areas and pop areas that the two shouldn’t meet in the middle,” says James. “We’re influenced by a lot of soundtracks, but we’re not interested in using that form. We try to push all of those elements into a pop song. That’s the challenge.” “And to let that change the shape of the song,” adds Trish.