Favourite Albums of 2011 #4: "Witch Cults of the Radio Age"

Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age [2009]

This is that record on which Broadcast collaborate with Ghost Box label artist the Focus Group. I am not quite sure how the collaborative process works here but the end result sounds much more like a sound collage than Broadcast's usual work. My limited exposure to the Focus Group suggests that their typical output is also rather collagey. However in this case the album's offerings come across like a collage of sounds made by Broadcast.

The album has a somewhat occult and ghostly feel to it, like we are hearing fragmentary echoes from another age (hence the title, obv.). And this spectral character is lent a certain poignancy by the recent death of Broadcast's Trish Keenan.

previous review

An inuit panda production

2011 Favourite Albums

I have been thinking about what were my favourite new to me records of 2011. And the following are the ones I came up with. A fuller write-up of these will appear soon in the pages of Frank's APA and ultimately on Inuit Panda. Where possible I have linked back to my original reviews of these records.

Jane Weaver
The Fallen By Watch Bird [2010]

My favourite record is this piece of somewhat psychey neo-folk from Jane Weaver, Bird Records supremo. If strange folky sounds are your thing then check this out.

Bo Hansson
Lord of the Rings [1970]

Mr Hansson wrote his own musical accompaniment to the Tolkien-classic back in the past. He seems a bit more interested in the dark and sinister aspects of the great book.

The Flaming Lips
Embryonic [2009]

Some say that the Flaming Lips have become dull and mainstream. They may not have listened to this.

Broadcast & The Focus Group
Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age [2009]

Spooky electronic music from this interesting collaboration, lent a certain poignancy by the recent death of Trish Keenan of Broadcast.

Dean & Britta
13 Most Beautiful: Songs For Andy Warhol's Screen Tests [2010]

A series of tunes recorded to accompany showings of Andy Warhol screen tests, some covers and some original. Sonic Boom has some production input and it does all end up sounding a bit neo-shoe gaze, but in a good way.

Tom Tom Club
[Untitled First Album] [1982]

Funky side project band from Talking Heads rhythm section, together with input from their friends and relations. Impossible not to like.

Richard Thompson
1000 Years of Popular Music [live] [2006]

Mr Thompson and his two lady friends perform tunes from the last thousand years, including quite a few pop tunes of the last 100 years. Given that this is Richard Thompson we are talking about, most of these songs are a bit sadface.

Black Mountain Transmitter
Black Goat of the Woods [2009]

This seems to be an Irish-made record, so I am for once doing my bit for Team Ireland. It is like a soundtrack to a low budget 1980s horror film, and all sounds vaguely Lovecraftian. Iä! Iä!

Magnet & Paul Giovanni
The Wicker Man OST [1973]

A collection of original neo folkie tunes and creepy instrumental pieces from the film that made people think twice about trips to isolated Scottish islands.

v/a nlgbbbblth CD 11.14: Níl sé anseo [CD-R]

Mr Nlgbbbblth's offering is a rare example of a CD-R that deserves a commercial release, painting as it does a picture of Ireland in the late 1970s and early 1980s from musical pieces, TV jingles, snippets of news programmes, and so on. Also features priests.

v/a Rajasthani Street Music [CD-R]

This is a version of something due to appear on Sublime Frequencies at some stage. It is a selection of pieces recorded by Mr Seb Bassleer on a trip to India and is delightful to the ear.

Ween
Thom's Ween TOAD [CD-R]

This CD-R from my old friend and quaffing partner Thom has been my introduction to the music of Ween – and I like it.


An inuit panda production

Broadcast "Mother is the Milky Way"

This was an e.p. sold at concerts on one of Broadcast's last tours. But fret not, gentle reader – I have not turned into one of those people who pays loads of money for rare records, as I just downloaded it from the internet. It is basically the same kind of stuff as the Broadcast / Focus Group record… in fact this might even be a collaboration with the Focus Group. But one thing that is very striking about this to me is the extensive use of sampled birdsong, to such an extent that listening to this while walking around I am never sure which is the recording and which is ambient noise. I must burn a copy to disc so that I can listen to it on my proper stereo at home. Maybe loads of little song birds will come along to listen to their friends on the record.

An inuit panda production

Dreams In The Witch House

I went on holidays to Lanzarote in January. Flying home, I found myself listening to the strange electronic music of Broadcast, a wonderful accompaniment to my sleepy flight. The next day I learned that Trish Keenan of Broadcast had died following swine flu complications. People die all the time, particularly people involved in the world of music, but her death affected me a bit more than most. She is roughly the same age as me and was struck down not by some crazy rock star ailment but by a very everyday disease that could strike anyone at any time and usually just makes them a bit poorly for a couple of days. If the dice roll badly for her, they could for me too.

Keenan's death came at a time when my interest in the music of Broadcast was on the up. I had gone off them a bit around the time of Haha Sound (I had found that album a bit tuneless, though now I think perhaps it was just a transition from the faux-60s sound of their earlier recordings). I found reading about the recent album they had done with the Focus Group fascinating. It seemed like Broadcast were moving decisively in an almost occult direction, trying to become modern hierophants fashioning a spectral music evoking imaginary cults of cyber magi. The pictures of Broadcast that appeared in The Wire at this time were rather striking, with Keenan having put her youthful looks behind her in favour of an aspect more akin to that of a high priestess of secret wisdom.

And now she is no more. I am very sorry now that I did not get to any of the festivals Broadcast played last year and I think with sympathy of James Cargill, her musical and life partner. Listening to the album Broadcast made with the Focus Group, I am struck by how spectral the record sounds. Now with Keenan actually dead, yet still able to sing to us from when she was alive, it is like she has herself become a ghost of the electronic age.

This is of course my second piece on Trish Keenan. You can read its rather similar predecessor here.

image source

An inuit panda production

Three Records of Strange Music

Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age

Bo Hansson Lord of the Rings

The Flaming Lips Embryonic

I went music mad a while ago and brought these three records of weirdo music together on the one day (but not at the same tyme – last two were in Tower, but I could only find the first in HMV). The Broadcast and Focus Group album I of course acquired not long after hearing of Trish Keenan's death. It is an odd record, being in some respects a remixing of new Broadcast work by Mr Focus Group, while in other ways it seems like a record the Broadcasters made in direct collaboration with him. Some of it is song-based, in so far as the more recent music of Broadcast ever sounds like songs, while a lot of it seems like typical Focus Group sound-collage, albeit with a lot of the fragments seeming to have been culled from Broadcast's studio endeavours. It is meant to sound like the title suggests – calling to mind an occult investigation of the contemporary world.

I like it, but I must make certain warnings to the unwary who are thinking of approaching it. The record works best altogether, and not as separate tracks. One of the more song-based pieces is 'The Be Colony', featuring a delightfully narcotic vocal from Trish Keenan. I had previously heard it on the Rough Trade Counter Culture album for 2009, where it does not really make much impact. Listened to here, however, it seems like one of the best things ever.

Bo Hansson also died surprisingly recently. He was some old Swedish hippy who made records that maybe were not big sellers although they did have a considerable afterlife as cult artefacts. His Lord of the Rings album is, obviously, inspired by the Tolkien classic. Keyboard-heavy, it is more like a soundtrack to an imaginary film than a musical dramatisation of the book. Without any of the electronic trickery available to Broadcast (or the Focus Group) it manages to have a similarly occult feel to it. This is a record I have heard before, but the most striking part of it for me is the intro to 'The Black Riders (Flight to the Ford)'. And why? Well, this is used to soundtrack one of the pivotal scenes in Lukas Moodysson's film Together (the one about the Swedish hippies living in a commune in the 1970s, featuring loads of Swedish music from that era). The whole album is great and would work as a great soundtrack to sitting around in a relaxed frame of mind discussing important issues in the great book of the 20th century (like… what do people in Mordor eat? I mean, if the whole place is basically a volcanic slag heap, yet is full of the huge hosts of Sauron, what does he feed them on?)

And then to Embryonic. I had rather lost touch with The Flaming Lips. It seemed a bit like they had lost touch with their wayward art-nutter sides in favour of courting bland mainstream success with easily approached ballads like that one about someone called Yoshimi and her struggle against pink robots. But then I started hearing that they had gone all weird again. Doing a track-for-track cover of The Dark Side of the Moon suggested a certain return to odd form (or a certain desire to cover one of the most successful albums of all time, for cash), and then this album came out. You may have seen the cover – it's the one with Wayne Coyne looking like he is being born out of some lady's vagina. The music is from the more dense side of the Flaming Lips oeuvre, featuring not so much of the crooning ballads but a lot of funny noises and tracks that chug along in a distorted big rock kind of way. I am becoming quite fond of this record and so I am excited that the band are going to be playing in Dublin this summer, as the Flaming Lips have acquired the reputation as one of the great live bands of our times and I reckon these tracks would sound great live.

My favourite track on Embryonic of course is 'I Can Be A Frog', in which the lyrics go "She said* I can be a X", where X is the name of (usually) an animal, and they have Karen O on guest vocals doing noises over the phone for the appropriate animal. Rarrrr!

*I think it was Freaky Trigger's Tom Ewing who pointed out what a great idea it is to include the words "She said" in songs you write, as it suggests to your listeners that you might actually know some women.

Lord of the Rings image source

Embryonic image source

An inuit panda production

Trish Keenan

I was recently on holiday in Lanzarote. Flying home, I listened to two albums by Broadcast, Tender Buttons and HaHa Sound. Much of the music on these records has a spectral, ghostly quality, suiting the half-awake, half-asleep state in which I found myself.

The next day I discovered that Trish Keenan of Broadcast had died. This was sad news, on any number of levels. Keenan was about the same age as I am, and she died of an everyday infection that many people catch and fight off, so there seems like something cruelly random in her passing.

There are many obituaries of Trish Keenan out there, and you would probably be better off reading them than anything I have to say about her, Broadcast, or the music they made. I like the personal tone of this piece in particular, so maybe give that a go.

image source

Broadcast "Tender Buttons"

So yeah, Broadcast. I saw them first all those years ago at the Bowlie Weekender, when one of my pals drunkenly accosted them at a post gig disco, telling them how great they were but also giving them some important advice on how to progress their career. "No wait, come back!" were his last words to them. Since then Broadcast have released a number of records, typically shedding a member with each one. I remember distinctly not liking the record before this – although some people (e.g. musical extremist P--- W----) felt that it was too twee, it seemed to me to be fundamentally lacking in tunes. One might almost say that it was not twee enough. I resolved to have no more to do with Broadcast.

When this Tender Buttons record came out, though, I noticed a lot of people giving it good talk. Seeing a cheapo copy in Fopp led to me taking a punt on it. Like a lot of the stuff picked up in Glasgow, I cannot say I have listened to it too closely as yet. But on a first listen or to, it seems to be a return to tune-based music, while still having the "BBC Radiophonic Workshop go pop!" sounds that everyone wants from them. Even though they are now only a two-piece, Trish Keenan still knows her place as a vocalist, though I think she makes up for it by doing loads of other musical stuff for the band. I think I will like this record a lot when I listen to it more – but only time will tell.

Since writing that, I moved flat and the record got buried.

Another DEAF event

Along with a number of people we went to this DEAF event at which The White Noise were going to be playing, together with DJing from Broadcast and the lads from the Finders Keepers record label (or maybe it was the lads from the B-Music club; these are the same lads). What we were not expecting was a performance by some ladies called Pollyfibre. Wearing very tight silver spandex costumes and robot masks, they came onstage and did things to bits of fabric with scissors, irons, and stuff. All of this made unusual noises as they seemed to be heavily miked up. Their performance tended more in the direction of electronic art rather than music, making it all one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen. Deadly stuff, I hope they play again sometime.

The White Noise were billed as going to play their 1969 album An Electrical Storm... but they confounded explanations by doing no such thing and serving up instead some electronic music that owed more than nothing to contemporary dance music. I think a lot of people were a bit pissed off by them, but I found them rather enjoyable. I was rather amused by the way they performed 'Firebird', An Electrical Storm's standout track. They just played the original recording off a laptop while David Vorhaus sang over it. Awesome.

As you know, David Vorhaus is the man who recorded the ORCH5 sample for the Fairlight Synthesiser, this being that VOMP! noise you get on a lot of hip hop records and Kate Bush albums. He took it from the bit in Stravinsky's Firebird where the full orchestra comes in, and tonight he got his money's worth out of it by throwing it into a few of the tunes.

I can't remember what tunes the Broadcast people played, but I remember liking them; Stereolab music may have been involved. Andy Votel of B-Music / Finders Keepers played loads of that Turkish psych loved by all right thinking people. One track in particular had me saying to Irene "Wow, this one is brilliant" and she said "It's Selda, Scott put it on one of his compilations". I resolved to track down a copy of music by this woman. For a backdrop they had some Japanese erotic horror film; it looked amazing.

This concert was all on in The Sugar Club. Annoyingly, they no longer serve Brandy Alexanders, but we were able to relax back in plush seats and watch the action. Sadly, this meant that getting up to dance to the DJs was not an option, as the seats were too comfortable to leave.

Electronic Pandas