Primer: Broadcast-- Local Cut

Primer: Broadcast

October 28th, 2009 [6:07AM] Posted by: Michael Mannheimer | 0 COMMENTS

Formed: 1995 in Birmingham, England.

Members: Currently, just two: vocalist Trish Keenan and bassist-programmer James Cargill.

Latest release: Broadcast the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, a collection of what Keenan calls “seancing songs and witch cult rumbles.”

Why you care: Nobody—and I’m looking at you, Stereolab—does spacey, soot-covered electronic pop quite like Broadcast. Since its first release for Warp Records, 1997’s singles collection Work and Non Work, the band has only gotten weirder, clouding its ’60s girl group melodies and Keenan’s icy and mesmerizing voice in layers of fuzzy ambience and jarring noise. 2003’s Haha Sound stands as one of the finest works of the decade, a record of Space Age lounge pop obscured by all sorts of blips and bloops. Once a four-piece band, Broadcast pared down to a duo for 2005’s Tender Buttons, and this tour (the band’s first North American dates in four years) promises to showcase new compositions and old classics reinterpreted for a mostly electronic backdrop. Still, hidden underneath the clutter are some fantastic pop songs, from Haha Sound’s “Before we Begin” to the flat-out gorgeous “Come On Let’s Go.”

Sounds like: Stereolab if it were obsessed with Thom Yorke’s The Eraser and ditched motorik rhythms for minimal, clunky beats and atypical song structures.

For fans of: The United States of America, Beach House, Warp Records.

SEE IT: Broadcast plays Sunday, Nov. 1, at Doug Fir, with Atlas Sound and the Selmanaires. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.

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